ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 7, 1997 TAG: 9702070022
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: the tipoff
SOURCE: ALMENA HUGHES
RACQUE 'EM UP: Top international women players will compete for a $6,000 Total Pro Purse in the Ektelon Championship Racquetball Series, in Roanoke for the first time today through Sunday. The free event at the Roanoke Athletic Club also will include men's and women's open amateur competitions and additional cash prizes. Call Marilyn Montano at the RAC, 989-5758.
FASHION FUSION: The models, including Mayor David Bowers and the Rev. Charles Green of the NAACP, will be as diverse as the cultures that influenced tonight's multicultural fashion show in Hollins College's Babcock Auditorium, Dana Science Building. The free presentation will begin at 7 p.m. Call 362-6451.
FUNNY GUY: Doug Stanhope, winner of the prestigious San Francisco Comedy Competition, will use a Roanoke audience to hone his act for an upcoming HBO special. Stanhope's irreverent, adult-oriented humor will be presented tonight and Saturday at 8:15 p.m. and at 10:30 p.m. at Slaphappy's in the Patrick Henry Hotel. Admission will cost $8 per person. Call 344-JOKE.
HAPPY NEW YEAR: A traditional lion dance, auctioning of Chinese items, door prizes, cultural demonstrations, special guests and lots of traditional sumptuous foods will mark the Chinese New Year of the Ox and help Roanoke's Lijiang Sister City project. The event will take place 6 p.m. Sunday at South Roanoke Methodist Church, 2330 South Jefferson St. Admission is $12 for adults, $6 for children ages 3 through 12, and free for those younger than 3. For reservations, call 774-6172.
RICHMOND REMEMBERED: On Tuesday, Roanoke Times staff writer Robert Freis will discuss Richmond in 1863, as seen from the pages of the Richmond Dispatch. The free presentation by the Roanoke Civil War Round Table will be held at 7 p.m. in Friendship Manor's Friendship Hall, 397 Hershberger Road. Call Clive or Betty Rice at 563-9034.
GHOST BUSTERS: Producers Doug Chancey and Steve Beatty are hoping that the live performances of Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love" will appease the restless ghosts long rumored to haunt Blacksburg's historic Lyric Theatre. The shows at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Feb. 16, 20, 21 and 22, will be the first time in several decades that live theater will take place at the Lyric. Call 951-0604.
KINDRED SPIRITS: New York jazz pianist, actress, playwright, producer and mom Marjorie Eliot says she feels a special kinship to Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the 19th century black author and poet whom she will portray in a one-woman show Wednesday. Harper, a working mother who supported herself and her daughter through earnings from her writing, authored "Iola Leroy," the first published novel by a black woman. Her poems, dedicated to love, God, home, justice, abolition and freedom struck deep chords. The portrayal of her life will be given at 11 a.m. in Virginia Western Community College's Whitman Auditorium. Admission is free. Call 857-7583.
CHICAGO CLASSICS: Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun" is the tale of the Younger family filling a tiny South Side Chicago apartment in the '50s with their physical presence and their dreams. The Washington Post compared the play, first produced in Chicago nearly 40 years ago, to such works as "Death of A Salesman," "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and "The Glass Menagerie."
Hansberry, 29 when "Raisin" debuted, was the first black woman and the youngest American produced on Broadway and the only black at that time to win the New York Drama Critics' Best Play of the Year Award.
The show begins its run Wednesday through March 9 on Mill Mountain Theatre's Main Stage. Call 345-5740; (800) 317-6455 or TDD (540) 224-1215.
LENGTH: Medium: 74 linesby CNB