Copious Notes

Eddie Montgomery, left, and Troy Gentry, of Montgomery Gentry, accept the Home Depot Humanitarian Award at the 45th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas on April 18, 2010. AP Photo by Matt Sayles.

KaBOOM!, a charitable organization that builds play places, and The Home Depot will build a playground in Lexington this fall in honor of country music stars Montgomery Gentry.

Lexington was selected in a nationwide vote April 12 to 30, beating out five other cities including Atlanta and Los Angeles. Lexington received 65 percent of the 54,000 votes cast.

Montgomery Gentry, the Kentucky-based duo of Eddie Montgomery and Troy Gentry, was awarded the Academy of Country Music/Home Depot Humanitarian Award on April 18 at the 2010 Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas. The award was in recognition of the group’s national and international humanitarian work. The playground is part of the honor.

The location and dates for the build, which will be done by Home Depot associates, will be announced later.

The University of Kentucky has named Michael Tick, chair of the department of theater at Louisiana State University, as the new dean of the College of Fine Arts. Tick is also the producing artistic director of Swine Palace, a not-for-profit professional theater company connected to LSU that serves Baton Rouge.

Michael Tick.

Tick has been at LSU since 1999. Prior to that, he was in Southeastern Virginia where he was instrumental in founding the Commonwealth’s Governor’s School for the Arts and served on the faculty at Old Dominion University.

Tick has also taught at the University of Rhode Island, Northwestern University and Harvard, to name a few. He has a masters from Northwestern and doctorate from New York University. Outside of academia, he has worked with Trinity Repertory Company, the Newport Music Festival, Newport Jazz Festival and produced several shows that have toured nationally and internationally.

Tick succeeds Robert Shay, who served as dean from 1998 to 2010. He will begin work at UK in July. His appointment is pending approval by the UK Board of Trustees.

“Although I leave behind two daughters at LSU, I will have no problem ‘seeing blue!’” Tick said in a UK news release. “It’s truly a privilege and an honor to be in this position, and I greatly appreciate the tremendous vote of confidence. My wife Cathy and I, along with our 10-year old daughter Abbie, look forward to relocating to Lexington.”

Daniel Townsend, an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music and the wigmaster and makeup artist for Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, will conduct a theatrical makeup workshop from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 22 at the Loudoun House, 209 Castlewood Drive.

The workshop is in conjunction with the Lexington Art League‘s two concurrent exhibits, which deal with identity and costuming, Alternate Selves and Passing: Fashioning Drag. The workshop is $85 for the general public, $60 for Art League supporters. For reservations, contact Julia Curiel at the Art League by calling (859) 254-7024 or emailing jcuriel@lexingtonartleague.org.

Unrequited, the feature film debut by Lexington-based director Jason Epperson and starring Twilight‘s Michael Welch, is headed to Cannes, France, and then Kentucky.

It will be screened at the Cannes Film Festival and Film Market on Thursday. It is not an official selection of the festival, but will be shown during Cannes and potentially be seen by influential people in the film industry.

Then, in June, it will have its official premiere in Lexington the week of June 14. Producer Jeff Day said the date is not settled because they are trying to coordinate schedules with Welch, co-star Sarah Habel and the Kentucky Theatre.

The movie, a suspense film about a young man who takes his ex-girlfriend hostage after his life falls apart, was filmed in Central Kentucky last summer. It was an independent production by Lucky Day Studios, co-owned by Asbury College assistant professor of communications Jeff Day and 13th District Commonwealth Attorney Tom Lockridge, with hopes to secure distribution after the film was finished.

The film has been picked up by Archlight Films, the distributor of films such as Crash, the 2006 Academy Award winner for best picture. Day says plans are to enter the movie in a number of film festivals before a general release.

Joanna Jerome is Julia and Aubin Munn is Laura in Crish Barth's "Hill Cattle," part of the Midway Festival of Plays. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

If you think you have a good 10-minute play or two in you, 517 Playwrights wants to see your script. The Central Kentucky play-writing group is seeking submissions for its second annual 10-minute play competition.

The winning seven scripts will be presented at the Midway Festival of New Plays at the Thoroughbred Community Theatre in November.

Contest organizers are allowing Kentucky playwrights a bit of a leg up, giving preference to Bluegrass State playwrights and allowing them to submit two scripts, while writers out of state get to offer only one. Last year’s competition attracted more than 150 submissions from around the world.

Submissions must be in English and no longer than 10 minutes or 10 pages. They are due by June 30 and should be sent to ky.playwright@yahoo.com with the subject line “Kentucky Contest Submission” for in-state entries and “Contest submission” for out-of-state entries.

The Lexington Art League‘s current exhibit, Passing: Fashioning Drag, is the latest manifestation of documentarians Kurt Gohde and Kremena Todorova’s three-year (thus far) project documenting drag culture in Lexington, Ky. Previously they have exhibited and lectured on their work in the United States and Europe. Future plans include a book and monologue play modeled after The Laramie Project.

This weekend, Passing comes to life on the stage of Buster’s Billiards and Backroom with a show featuring many of the performers pictured on the Loudon House’s walls and costumes by Patryq Howell, whose work is also featured in the exhibit. Click play, above, to see some of Gohde and Todorova’s images and hear them and Howell talk about the project.

Click here to read more about Passing: Fashioning Drag.