Dead’s Hart beats therapeutic drums
Longtime Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart came to New Orleans with a message for thousands of attendees at the AARP’s national convention: Music has therapeutic powers.
Hart spoke about the importance of music and playing instruments. He led a drum circle with hundreds of drummers at the convention, which ended Saturday.
Hart and neurologist Adam Gazzaley, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco, spoke about research showing music has a positive effect on the brain and how playing music can help offset the mental declines of aging.
Throughout the convention attendees could stop into a music-making pavilion.
Time is right for Lane’s ‘freakout’ role
More than two decades after she last graced the stage in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” Academy Award-nominated actress Diane Lane is returning to the theater in a Chicago production of Tennessee Williams’ “Sweet Bird of Youth.”
Lane will star opposite rising Broadway actor Finn Wittrock at the Goodman Theatre, playing faded movie star Princess Kosmonopolis in the production that opens Monday and runs through Oct. 28. She will portray an older woman being used by a younger man to win back his former lover.
“I think that timing is everything in terms of the readiness for taking on a new challenge,” Lane said in an interview. “A show this large and a role this demanding, certainly I’ve made jokes about it – midlife crisis martyrdom or empty-nest freakout. It’s sort of now or never.”
Emmy nominees celebrate pre-show
Kevin Costner, Amy Poehler, Bryan Cranston, Zooey Deschanel, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and other Emmy-nominated actors celebrated their success at a series of parties around Tinseltown.
Most began their evening at the Emmy Performers nominee reception Friday at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. That’s where nominees received certificates acknowledging their acting achievements.
The nominated actors posed for a class photo, with many proudly holding their certificates above their heads.
“You get to meet so many people you might not get to see at the Emmys,” Elizabeth Moss, of “Mad Men,” said.
The Emmy Awards will be presented tonight at the Nokia Theatre and broadcast live on ABC.
The birthday bunch
Actor Mickey Rooney is 92. Singer Julio Iglesias is 69. Singer Bruce Springsteen is 63. Actor Jason Alexander (“Seinfeld”) is 53. Rapper-producer-record head Jermaine Dupri is 40. Actor Anthony Mackie (“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”) is 34.