Given Tuesday’s opening night of Sheer Madness, it looks like Cosmopolitan Cabaret has another hit on its hands. Shear Madness is based on a serious German play, Scherenschnitt, by writer and psychologist Paul Portner. The play is set in a uni-sex hair salon, has six stereotypical characters and involves the murder of a concert pianist. It is a study of how people perceive or misperceive reality. Bruce Jordan, a former high school teacher, began adapting the play in 1976. He was joined by fellow former teacher Marilyn Abrams in producing the first production of Scherenschnitt -now known-as Shear Madness at the Lake George Dinner Theater in Upstate New York in 1978. They began to notice

Sacramento's arts community is looking for more than just 15 minutes of fame. "There's a stigma that artists can't communicate what they do," said artist Milton Bowens. "Or that our profession is all Andy Warhol's personality." An effort to change that started in June, when Mayor Kevin Johnson's For Art's Sake initiative was begun to raise the profile of arts in the city. "We are going to promote the arts in a real way," he said. It got off to a running start. To fund the monthly meetings, Johnson raised $100,000 within a week of starting the initiative. The last 12-months, the planning stage of the initiative, were managed by Sharon Gerber. She owns Six Degreez, an event-planning comp

A little over two months ago, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts chose Sacramento over 27 other cities as the first partner for the "Any Given Child" program. The program, which promotes arts education, will be developed in Sacramento over the next two years before rolling out nationwide. Mayor Kevin Johnson emailed the following survey regarding participation in the Any Given Child program: In October, the Kennedy Center announced that it would pilot its Any Given Child program here in Sacramento with the goal of providing access and equity in arts in education to all students. Since then, we've been hard at work focusing on this welcome opportunity to expand arts opport