Daily Loaf

Christopher Rutherford and Glenn Gover deserving a great audience

Why does one come to the theater if one does not want to watch the play? Case in point: The Woman in Black sold out performance last night. I directed the show and have been to just about every performance, so I tend to watch the audience as well as the play.  It is a thriller with many technical aspects that all need to be spot-on every night, so I watch how it is all played out and how it is all received by the audience.  So, Sunday night being a sold out show, I lingered on the sidelines so that those who paid for a ticket got a seat. I had the perfect view and it was the perfect audience. Almost.

Perhaps I should explain “perfect audience.”  Have you ever been an observer of art with a whole room full of strangers with whom you collectively took the journey with the artist — as one?  Ever been at a performance where you needed to see that exact thing at that exact time in your life?  Ever been inspired collectively with the person sitting next to you, without talking to each other?  It is not a type of audience, per se, but rather the right combination for the particular experience at hand.

Conversely, as a performer or fellow audience member sitting in your vicinity, if you’ve had a bad day at work and can’t shake it off, we feel it.  If you had too much to drink at happy hour before you got to the theater, we feel it.  If you are waiting for that voice mail or text message and want intermission to get here so you can check it, we feel it.  Or, in the case of last night’s performance, if you did not come to the theater to watch a play, we feel it.

Sunday’s play was 98 percent the perfect audience.  Read the rest of this entry »

In the midst of its successful run of Woman in Black, Gorilla Theatre presents a one-night-only staged reading of Stay, a new play by Sheila Cowley, starring Eugenie Bondurant, Christopher Rutherford, Nicole Jeannine Smith, Fred Lasday, and Bridget Bean. Remember in Misery, when Kathy Bates holds her favorite writer hostage, and goes at his ankles with a sledgehammer when he tries to escape? (Sorry in advance to the three of you who haven’t seen it.) Stay takes a closer look at that form of dark, all-consuming obsession that sometimes passes for love. Tues., Oct. 27, Gorilla Theatre, 4199 N. Hubert Ave., Tampa, 813-879-2914 for reservations; no online reservations accepted, gorillatheatre.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Christopher Rutherford (Nicole Jeannine Smith photo)

The Woman in Black is an entertaining, unusually literary ghost drama for the Halloween season, though one that lacks much reason for existing outside its capacity to excite a degree of fear. Beautifully acted by Christopher Rutherford and Glenn Gover, the current Gorilla Theatre production is genuinely spooky — several times spectators shrieked — and pleasingly original. It won’t remind you of anything else you’ve seen.

It features wonderfully discomfiting sound effects, super-serious characters (to raise the level of terror), and a ghost of dreadful countenance with nothing the least bit friendly about her. Skillfully directed by Ami Sallee Corley, Woman has everything but substance — some perspective on reality that might remain with us after the final curtain falls.

I suppose it’s wrong to want more than chills and thrills from a Halloween play, but this drama is so consistently intelligent, a little authentic significance would hardly be out of place. Oh, well. If you’re looking for a spine-tingler more intellectual than ZooBoo, this is your poison. It’s about as nerve-wracking as these things get, and so gore-free that you can bring the (older) kids. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t panic: The dinos in the Walking with Dinosaurs arena show aren’t going to reenact a scene from Jurassic Park and start eating audience members, but the animatronics in this arena show are so life-like that it almost seems like a possibility. The award-winning epic is based on the BBC series of the same name, and includes life-sized replicas of 10 dino species that collaborate with actors for an entertaining show that explores native dino habitats throughout the history — from the splitting of the continents to the Triassic and Jurassic periods, finally ending with the extinction of these creatures that have fascinated humans for centuries. Oct. 14-18, 7 p.m. Weds. -Fri., 11 a.m., 3 and 7 p.m. Sat., 1 and 5 p.m. Sun., St. Pete Times Forum, 401 Channelside Dr., Tampa, $17-$62, 813-223-1000, dinosaurlive.com. – Franki Weddington

Best of the Bay winning Café Hey is celebrating its two-year anniversary with Monster’s Ball, a not-so-spooky night of music, art, and partying. Super Secret Best Friends, Florida Night Heat, SOG and DJ’s SowsDef and Pocket Chomper stop by to drop some live music in your ears, and lotsa local artists — like Chad Mize and Phillip Clark of BlueLucy, Anthony Zollo (another BOTB alum), Josh Pearson and more – showcase an array of awesome art. Don’t let the artists and musicians have all the fun, though — there’s body plastering for anyone who wants in on the action, and fire spinning for those who prefer spectator sports. Sat., Oct. 17, 8 p.m.-midnight, Cafe Hey, 1540 N. Franklin St., Tampa, free, cafehey.com. – Franki Weddington

After the break: Get the mess scared out of you by the Woman in Black, the Florida Orchestra plays for free at Pops in the Park, shake your moneymaker at Block Party Parranda and more. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to On the Radar, where we preview up-and-coming arts events to mark your calendar for. If you scare easily or shudder at the thought of ghosts and dark, scary rooms, perhaps you should sit this one out. This weekend, Gorilla Theatre presents the classic ghost tale, Woman in Black.

Closely based on English author Susan Mills’ novel, the stage performance – adapted by Stephen Mallatratt – is said to chill, thrill and terrify audiences. It follows Mrs. Drablow, who lives and dies alone in a desolate house in a dreary part of England. Depressing, right? After Drablow dies, a young lad from London is sent to attend her funeral and sort out her papers. As you may have guessed, the unlucky chap gets caught up in the dark, tragic secrets that remain in the now empty, dismal house … or is it empty? Read the rest of this entry »

As a freelance artist I find myself in a lull of productivity sometimes.  In the springtime I tend to do a lot of administrative work for the Access Arts Scholarship program for the Patel Conservatory, so my artistic side isn’t being shopped out to other companies as much (i.e. I don’t audition for shows during that time.)

In these times I always think I am going to dust off that script of the one-woman show I’ve always wanted to work on.  Problem is, when you do a one-person project it seems like you have to do all the work for yourself; be your own motivator, be responsible to only yourself.  It’s hard to pull through on the deliverables when it is only you that you have to answer to.

Well, local actor Curtis Belz found the gumption, self-motivation, and two friends (eventually more), to pull off Danny Hoch’s (pictured) Jails, Hospitals and Hip-hop, a one-man show demanding that he play several personas, including Flip, a good ol’ boy from the Midwest who has come to identify with urban hip-hoppers; Bronx, a sidewalk vendor who gets pinched for selling without a license; and Sam, a prison guard with an anger management problem — evidenced by his beating a prisoner nearly to death. The show is playing tonight as Jobsite’s latest Job-side project. This is the second of two preview performances before its full incarnation in September at HCC Ybor. Read the rest of this entry »

Talia

Editor’s Note: Actor/director/teacher/playwright Ami Sallee Corley (right) continues her series of posts about the challenges of being a freelance artist in Tampa Bay. Today’s topic: Self-esteem (or lack thereof)

So I have had the incredible honor of being one of the cast of Pericles, Jobsite’s newest Joe Popp rock musical.  I get to play the love interest, a post-graduate hippie chick rebelling against her Cape Cod “old money” roots.  I’m in jeans and braids and half the time I am barefoot and tote around a nice chip on my shoulder for Daddy’s attempts to assimilate me into “society.” Daddy: “I thought you were going to see that Kennedy boy?”  Talia: “No.  That was your idea, and I told you I don’t want to end up at the bottom of a lake.”

So, in a very favorable review, CL’s Mark Leib refers to me as Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: Actor/director/teacher/playwright Ami Sallee Corley (right) continues her series of posts about the challenges of being a freelance artist in Tampa Bay. This week’s topic: Auditions.

One of the major factors in being a successful freelance actor is getting work, right?  Well ask any actor in the Bay area how to find out when auditions are happening and you’ll get as many answers as people you ask.

There is no one-stop shopping spot where people list auditions.  If there is, it has got to be Tampa’s best-kept secret.  Raise your hand if you knew that Jobsite just held their 2009-2010 season auditions last week and that American Stage held their auditions over a month ago?  Most other theaters are participating in the Tampa Area Unified Auditions next weekend, hosted by HCC Ybor. Read the rest of this entry »

Watch out everybody, Bridget’s unleashed for the summer!

Well, you know, that really is an overstatement ‘cos I’m not much of a late night gal, but the Gorilla Theatre is dark for the summer (which means we don’t have any shows going on and I’m working “normal” hours) so it’s time for me to get out more and …. to see theatre in other places.  This week I went to an All Out Rep show at the Ritz, I visited Arts on 9th, and went to the 5th Annual Night of Alternative Theatre at American Stage in St. Pete.

Oh, and I welcome all your comments on this blog (like “stop writing about yourself already” or “what’s with the strange European punctuation?”) so please chip in, loveys! Read the rest of this entry »

Gorilla's Aubrey Hampton with four of this year's Young Dramatists.

The Tampa Bay area needs more playwrights. In the region of West Central Florida there are only 41 members of the Dramatists Guild — the national playwrights’ professional association — and of those 41, fewer than ten were sufficiently interested to come to Guild meetings in St. Pete last March, April and May. Where are the playwrights? Biding their time?

Maybe Gorilla Theatre can help. For the ninth year, this organization is hosting the Young Dramatists’ Project, a festival devoted to the best writing of local high school and middle school students. I attended last Sunday not to review the show, but to discover what our youngest playwrights might have to offer the area. Is there imaginative, innovative work coming from these teens? Might they eventually infuse the region with new talent?

Yes and yes. The first of the five plays that made it to the Gorilla stage this year uses instant messaging to tell us the story of a doomed love affair. Amanda Buck’s Sweet Nothings is about XXX2593 (Jamaica Reddick) and YYY4168 (Adom McRae), schoolmates who become sweethearts after she shows up as new girl at his high school. Buck has us watching on a large screen as the two lovers write each other over a period of months, and intersperses their writing with glimpses of their daily lives. Directed by David O’Hara, the play graphically demonstrates that even the most digital behavior can ingeniously be made theatrical. And even in the era of IM, love is still maddening.

Next on the lineup is Sam French’s This One Night in the Warehouse, a Pinteresque mindgame which sees two men (Chris Jackson and Curtis Belz) thrown into a locked room containing a gun with one bullet. Read the rest of this entry »

Nobody Don’t Like Yogi. As Yogi Berra prepares to revisit Yankee Stadium for Old Timers Day in 1999, he asks himself why he is breaking his vow never to step foot in the stadium again. Has his rocky relationship with volatile owner George Steinbrenner been overcome by his dedication to baseball fans? C. David Frankel plays Yogi in this one-man show. March 12-22, 7 p.m., Thurs., 8 p.m. Fri., 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Sat., 3 and 7 p.m. Sun., Gorilla Theatre, Tampa, $20-$25 ($10 student rush tickets available 30 minutes before showtime), 813-879-2914.

Holland America Line Coffee Concert: Romantic Rhapsodies. Conductor Alastair Willis joins The Florida Orchestra for a program that includes Mendelssohn’s Marchen von der schonen Melusine, Elgar’s Sospiri, the first movement of Grieg’s Concerto for Piano with 2008 TFO Young Artist Competition winner, pianist Aza Torshkoeva, Glinka’s Russlan and Ludmilla, Finzi’s Romance, and Khachaturian’s Adagio from Spartacus. Thurs., March 12, 11 a.m., Progress Energy Center for the Arts – Mahaffey Theater, St. Petersburg, $24-$40, 727-892-5767.

Contemporary Chinese Photography / My Florida Home: Recent Works by Benjamin Dimmitt. Now that the Super Bowl has passed, the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts moves from football photos to modern China and the wilder side of Florida. Contemporary Chinese Photography is culled from area collections and various international dealers and includes panoramas by Ma Liuming, Zhang Huan, Rong Rong and others. The centerpiece is a series of works by photo maker/architect Chen Jiagang, whose digitally blended photographic works investigate the downfall of China’s big cities, and the disparities between time-honored traditions and 21st-century ideals. Also on display is My Florida Home: Recent Works by Benjamin Dimmitt, an exhibit of large-scale black-and-white images of Florida’s tropical wildernesses by a Gulf Coast native-turned-New Yorker who currently teaches at NYC’s International Center of Photography. Dimmit gives a gallery talk 10:30 a.m. Sat., March 14.  Both exhibits are featured through May 9, FMOPA, downtown Tampa, $4 suggested donation, 813-221-2222. (Leilani Polk)

Monica Merryman, Barbara Eaker and Jim Wicker in A Body of Water.

There’s every kind of reason to stay home and hunker down nowadays — the general lack of money, for one thing. But this past weekend, at three very different arts events, it was extremely heartening to see big crowds of culture vultures out and about and applauding like crazy.

On Friday night at  Channelside Cinemas, the lobbies were abuzz outside the venues for the closing night of the  Gasparilla International Film Festival, with big lines for the Guzzo brothers’ Ghost of Ybor, the Joe Redner documentary Strip Club King and the race-car doc Truth in 24. My partner and I went to the latter to see it on the big screen (I’d already seen it on DVD). Though the pre-screening festivities felt uncomfortably commercial, what with handouts of Audi merchandise, spiels from local Audi dealers and multiple Audi ads on screen before the movie started, Truth still rocked — with one of the most heart-stopping shots of a near-miss car accident I’ve ever seen.

On Saturday night at Gorilla Theatre, cushions and extra seating had to be brought in to accommodate the capacity crowd for A Body of Water, Lee Blessing’s enigmatic play about a middle-aged couple who wake up in a New England country house with no idea who they are. The playwright keeps screwing with the characters and the audience, maybe having just a little bit too much fun playing God. But Larry and I left thinking that the play, written in 2005, has gained in relevance now that a lot of us are waking up with the feeling that none of the old reliables (homes, savings, jobs) can be counted upon. (And any play with a juicy role for the splendid Monica Merryman is a must-see in my book.)

On Sunday night at Ruth Eckerd it was easy to banish the clouds of uncertainty from our brains. We were part of the near sellout crowd that attended a glorious performance of a glorious piece of music: The Florida Orchestra and the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay doing Verdi’s Requiem. Stefan Sanderling conducted the huge assembled forces with equal parts precision and soul, and four extraordinary soloists — Indra Thomas, Gigi Mitchell-Valasco, Jeffrey Springer and Dean Elzinga — made Verdi’s passionate melodies soar.

It was the kind of night, and the kind of weekend, that made you glad to be living in Tampa Bay — and not just because of the weather.

Bechir Sylvain, the picture says it all.

Last fall I had the incredible opportunity to work intimately on stage with Bechir Sylvain in Six Degrees of Separation.  I post his head shot because not only does it paint him as this irresistible yet down-to-earth-and-all-around-lovable, sincere guy.  It is also an accurate depiction of the actor who has claimed Tampa as his temporary home since the beginning of November.

When Bechir was offered the role of Mister at American Stage’s King Hedley II it seemed as though he might be our neighbor indefinitely. But, alas, his time in Tampa ends this weekend, and I wanted the Daily Loaf readers to know about this gem of an artist who has graced our stages and our local establishments for the last four months. Read the rest of this entry »

Susan Hussey with her husband, Aubrey Hampton.

I’ve just found out that Susan Hussey, co-artistic director of Gorilla Theatre, has succumbed to cancer after a brave struggle. Susan was a playwright as well as a producer, and her work confronted issues of social and national significance. She was also one of the kindest persons in the theater, here or anywhere. I never heard her say a negative word about anyone – not another theater person, another writer or critic – and she brought dignity to every project she participated in.

Creative Loafing sends its warmest condolences to her husband Aubrey Hampton and to their son Trevor. Susan was a unique personality. Her gentleness, her thoughtfulness and her talent will be sorely missed.

Marion Baldeon and Casey Hicks in The Agreeable Husband (Photo: Alex Catalano)

One of my goals when I took the leap last February and became a freelance artist was not only to have more time to commit to Jobsite, but also to collaborate with the artists I’ve met in the Tampa Bay area on original projects.  This not only ensures more work for artists in our community, but it raises a consciousness for Tampa-grown art.  The first to come to a fully realized production is The Agreeable Husband, a dance-theater piece based on Amy Vanderbilt’s “Complete Book of Etiquette”, a how-to book for husbands and wives published in 1952.  We need the community to help us with the next layer of the project, set to open this April.

I am conducting interviews with mothers, fathers and children who grew up with this book and its ideals.  If you or someone you know fits this description, we’d love to have your perspective in this project.  Please e-mail AgreeableHusband@gmail.com.

Read the rest of this entry »

The highest-attended play in American Stage history.

There’s a lot being made about the state of professional theater in America these days.  You see theater closings almost daily, arts organization bailout packages are a hot topic, calls are being made for President Obama to create a Secretary of the Arts, layoffs are ubiquitous and now even the Kennedy Center is pitching in to provide support for arts organizations that may not make it another year.

Our industry is by no means recession-proof, and one that appears to be in as much trouble as the rest of the country. Yet, somehow, most of the professional theaters in the Tampa Bay area seem to be amidst their best seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

[Editor's Note: Ami Sallee Corley is an actor, a teacher and now a blogger for CL. (That's Ami in the photo with Drew DeCaro, Bechir Sylvain and Petrus
Antonius, fellow members of the cast of Gorilla Theatre's recent Six Degrees of Separation.) I'm pleased to have her join the conversation, which she begins with a particularly cogent question for area artists.]

In a city where an artist’s choice is to   survive on crumbs or leave, why would anyone want to stay and starve as an artist in Tampa?

I believe there are some pretty fantastic reasons out there.

If we are to build a thriving, sustainable arts and culture scene here in Tampa, we should at first focus on what makes it tempting to stay.  Here goes. Read the rest of this entry »

As discussed earlier on the Daily Loaf, St. Petersburg Times performing arts critic John Fleming recently questioned Creative Loafing theater critic Mark E. Leib about a possible conflict of interest in Leib’s relationship with two theaters. Now Fleming has published his criticisms in the Times.

Here’s the situation:  Gorilla Theatre recently hosted a staged reading of Leib’s new play, A River in the Desert, and this spring the Studio@620 will stage Leib’s Art People. Fleming, backed up by the ethics chair of the American Theatre Critics Association (Lawrence Bommer, a Chicago critic/playwright who has written reviews for CL sister paper the Chicago Reader), points out that because Leib reviews plays at both Gorilla and 620, having his own plays produced at these venues gives the appearance of a conflict of interest.

There are valid questions to be asked here, and Mark answered them on the Daily Loaf, generating a debate in the comments section between past and present CL staffers. But the Times article tries to pump up the controversy further with a question I find bogus: Read the rest of this entry »

So now we’re less than a week away from the staged reading of my play A RIVER IN THE DESERT at Gorilla Theatre and I get an e-mail from John Fleming, arts critic for the St. Petersburg Times. What he wants to know is, isn’t it a conflict of interest, or at least the appearance of such a conflict, for me to have a reading at a theater that I also review? And further, isn’t this also the case with the full production of my play ART PEOPLE at The Studio at 620 later in the spring? Am I perhaps being unethical? Please comment. I call him immediately and leave a message on his voice mail. Then, this morning, he calls me at home and asks for a response. I tell him this: During the ten years that I’ve been theater critic for Creative Loafing, I’ve made it a policy never to ask a local theater to produce one of my plays. I’ve always felt that that would be putting an intolerable pressure on the theater’s artistic director, who might worry that I would review his theater’s work negatively if he/she didn’t produce my work. But last year, Bob Devin Jones of The Studio@620 asked me to be one of the writers interviewed in the Studio’s writers series. Read the rest of this entry »

With only two weeks before the staged reading of my play A River in the Desert at Gorilla Theatre, we’ve had to make some quick personnel shifts. First Michael O. Smith, who’d agreed to play one of the two leads, had to pull out because he had too many other commitments. We asked another fine actor, Bob Heitman, to take the role and he graciously accepted. Then Chris Rutherford, who had agreed to play the other lead, also had to drop out because of prior engagements, including one that occurred on the same night as the reading. We’re still in the process of finding another actor. Now I should say that these sorts of problems are not at all unusual in the theater. In the years that I’ve been writing plays I’ve seen a lead actress break her foot the night before opening, a hired press agent fail to bring any press to a NY show, a director tell actors that he “couldn’t put his finger on” the problems that were leading these actors literally to beg for help, and several other sorts of mishaps too distressing to recount. And I’ve learned that I just have to accept them and move forward as quickly and confidently as possible. I have faith that River’s director, Jim Rayfield, will work swiftly to solve whatever problems come up, and I’m willing to provide any help when needed. Hopefully, when the reading premieres January 15, we’ll have the right cast and a sharp audience. Read the rest of this entry »

In addition to being Creative Loafing’s theater critic, I’m also a playwright (my first professional U.S. production was in 1980 at the American Repertory Theatre), and I’m about to embark on one of those experiences that makes playwriting so pleasing and nerve-wracking at the same time: an early exposure of a new play to an actual audience. In future posts, I’ll talk about the rehearsal process and the play itself, what drove me to write it and what sort of response it provokes. For the moment, I’ll talk about the chapter of the adventure I’ve just completed: the NY reading-that-wasn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

A subscription to a local theater is a great gift for the stagestruck, not to mention a superb way to ensure the stability of Tampa Bay’s often cash-strapped companies. But why give a subscription when the season’s half over? Good question, but many local  troupes have an answer: the flexible pass, which allows subscribers to apply ticket money to specific shows rather than requiring a full-season purchase. That means if you like what’s on tap in coming months, a subscription will still get you your money’s worth. American Stage, Gorilla Theatre and Stageworks are among the companies that offer such an arrangement, and Jobsite Theater is currently selling remainder-of-season subscriptions at a substantial discount.

Gift this: At American Stage, the six-ticket Flex Pass could be applied any number of ways. You could go seasonal and buy six tickets to A Tuna Christmas. Or you could wait till spring and buy two tickets apiece to August Wilson’s King Hedley II, Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and the musical Altar Boyz performed outdoors at Demens Landing. Or buy three tickets to Tuna, two tickets to II and one ticket for either Lysistrata or the Boyz. The permutations are endless and entirely up to you  (or the lucky person you give the pass to). One caveat: You can’t apply the Flex Pass to AmStage After Hours shows like the current Santaland Diaries (above left); those are “pay as you can” shows, so the pass wouldn’t give you much of a bargain. But consider this: Since Santaland is just about the funniest thing ever written by man (or at least by David Sedaris, and that’s saying something), you should consider throwing in some advance tickets to the show along with the pass. Flex Pass, $129 for six tickets; NextWave Pass, six tickets for those 30 years old or younger, $92. americanstage.org/seasonpass.php, 727-823-PLAY.

Photo of Brian Shea in The Santaland Diaries courtesy American Stage.

For more ideas from our Indie Holiday Shopping Spree, click here.

Louisiana alt-country songstress Mary Gauthier (pictured) plays a show in the intimate Jaeb Theater at Tampa Bay Performing Art Center. 7:30 p.m., $25.50. Read more about her in Upcoming Concerts.

Feminism is alive and kicking, and USF Women’s Studies Department stages a series of talks that celebrate the ever-evolving movement. Several of the country’s foremost feminist scholars are scheduled to appear. The first is Jennifer Baumgardner, a writer for rags ranging from Allure to The Nation, co-author of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future and Grassroots, A Field Guide for Feminist Activism, and producer/creator of the award-winning documentary, I Had an Abortion. Her talk is on “Aborton and Life.” 3 p.m., USF TECO Room., free admission.

The top 11 dancers from the fourth season of FOX’s So You Think You Can Dance perform at the St. Pete Times Forum when the show’s national live tour lands in Tampa tonight. 7:30 p.m., $35-$54.50.

Interested in taking part in a lively conversation about diversity? A new local networking and forum group, Community Members for Diversity, holds its monthly meeting tonight and invites the public to come out and get involved. This month’s featured organization is NFL Youth Education Towns, with special guest rep Stephanie Owens sharing info about the organization’s goals and mission. 6:30 p.m., Shimberg Playhouse-Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, free admission.

The latest installment of the Gorilla Reading Series spotlights William Leavengood’s new play, Charley and Emma, about the turbulent relationship between Charles Darwin and his devoutly Christian wife and first cousin, Emma Wedgewood. The staged reading is directed by James Rayfield and the cast includes Mike Norton, Meg Heimstead, Jim Wicker, Chris Jackson and Justin Duggan, among a few others. 7 p.m., Gorilla Theatre, Tampa, $5.

The final guest appearing as part of the Sustain it(!) – Strategies + Tactics for Sustainability in Architecture and Urbanism series is Miami-based sustainable architect Chad Oppenheim, who talks about development in his presentation, “In Search of Essence.” 6 p.m., C.W. Bill Young Joint Military/ROTC Building, Tampa, free admission.