Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2002 21:07:46 -1000 (HST) From: "Jackie M. Young" To: "Hawai'i Fans": ; Subject: KSMITH EMERGENCY, VMonologues *MAN*, this is *so sad*.....:=( :=( :=( I'm sending this to you folks just as it developed. :=( And it looked like he was planning to come to Hawai'i for a film, too.....*so close, and yet so far*......:=( --JY ======= From the Chakram-Refugees mailing list: Subject: [chakram-refugees] Kevin "Ares" Smith injured in China during an acting gig Actor injured in accident in China 13 February 2002 http://www.stuff.co.nz/inl/index/0,1008,1101624a11,FF.html Auckland actor Kevin Smith was hospitalised in China yesterday after an accident, his agent said today. His injury was not life-threatening. Smith, one of New Zealand's best-known stars of stage and screen, was in China for filming but was not working when he was injured, Robert Bruce said in a statement Smith's wife, mother, father and brother-in-law were with him. No other details were available. /////// Please note: To send 'Get Well Soon' and 'Best Wishes' Cards, all email can be sent to ALWheaties at: angela.wheaton@snet.net All Cards and Best Wishes will be forwarded to Kevin KTaborn ---------------- From the Chakram-Refugees mailing list: Subject: [chakram-refugees] Kevin Smith Kevin Smith, Ares to the Xenaverse, was critically injured in a fall while in Beijing, China about 10 days ago. He and his family could use all your good thoughts and prayers. An update on his condition can be found in the following NZ Herald article: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=939668&thesection=news&th Mist http://sword-and-staff.com -------------- From the Chakram-Refugees mailing list: Subject: [chakram-refugees] Kevin Smith's life hangs in the balance: NZ Herald From the NZ Herald: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=939668&thesection=news&th esubsection=general Kevin Smith's life hangs in balance 16.02.2002 The family of leading New Zealand actor Kevin Smith are by his hospital bedside in Beijing as his life hangs in the balance. Auckland-based Smith was critically injured in a fall in the Chinese capital 10 days ago and doctors treating him fear he may not recover from his head injuries. The accident occurred on February 6, the day after the 38-year-old finished work on a joint US-Chinese production, and as he was preparing to return to NZ. The hunky local star was then to have headed to movie "boot camp" to prepare for what many believed would be his big break, a role in a Hollywood blockbuster starring Bruce Willis. The doctor treating Smith told the Herald last night that staff from China's top movie production house, Beijing Film Studio, rushed him to the Beijing Union Hospital after the fall. He is believed to be on a life-support machine. The doctor, who did not wish to be named, said Smith had suffered a severe injury to his skull and was in a critical condition. He was at a "crucial" stage. Acting sources have said he was injured when he fell from a great height, possibly six storeys. His agent, Robert Bruce, would give no details, except to say the fall did not occur on the set of the martial arts movie. Li Hao, a spokeswoman for one of the companies involved in Warriors of Virtue II, said Smith, who had completed his film contract the day before the fall, had made a big impression. "Kevin is a very good actor and liked by his colleagues in the film crew - he is very popular," she said. Smith's wife, Suzanne, and his parents, Geoff and Yvonne, are understood to be with him. The couple have three children, Oscar, 11, Tyrone, 9, and Willard, 3. Mr Bruce said last night that the actor's family wanted to thank everyone who had sent messages of love and support. They were happy with the medical treatment he was receiving, although the language barrier was a problem. Smith has starred in many New Zealand stage, television and feature films and is perhaps best known for his role as Ares in Xena: Warrior Princess. His ambitions to break into the American movie market were realised when he scored a role in the $US70 million ($166 million) Bruce Willis action film Man of War, due to start filming in Hawaii next month. He had leaped at the chance to go to China because the role allowed him to learn from the stuntman who worked on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Comedian Mike King said he had heard that Smith was unconscious from a close friend who had talked to the actor's wife. Rumours have also been circulating that he had lost his eye, although his agent said he did not know. King, who did stand-up comedy with Smith, said he had found out about the accident four days ago. "With him [the friend] not saying anything, that says it all. If he was going to be fine then we would all know about it right now." Smith, Auckland-born but Timaru-raised, got into acting when his wife and childhood sweetheart saw a casting call while he was sidelined by concussion during the rugby season. He was soon a leading man, happy to laugh at his beefcake image. "A nicer guy you wouldn't find anywhere," King said. "He's an amazing guy." --STAFF REPORTERS ///// Thelonius ------------- From the Chakram-Refugees mailing list: Subject: [chakram-refugees] Kevin Smith is now listed as having Died Kevin Smith is now listed as having Died on the NZ Herald web page http://www.nzherald.co.nz/ ---------- NZ Herald Quote --------- Leading New Zealand actor Kevin Smith has died in a Beijing hospital after he was critically injured in a fall. His agent, Robert Bruce, confirmed that the 38-year-old actor had died. "I received a call from Kevin's family to say that he passed away... ------------------------------------ NZJester ---------------- From the Chakram-Refugees mailing list: Subject: [chakram-refugees] Kevin Smith I just had a phone call from a friend who told me that Solid Gold FM (an Auckland radio station) have just said on their 1 o'clock radio news that Kevin Smith has died. Usual cautions apply - this is probably accurate but I will believe it for sure if I hear it on the 6 o'clock TV news. Thelonius --------------- ======= And, now, back to "regular" news.....:=( --JY ------------- From the Chakram-Refugees mailing list: Subject: [chakram-refugees] Vagina Monologues Vid Capture Pictures I have put some Pictures on the New Xenaland Site That I grabbed from a Interview that was on TVNZ1 I hope to put more up later go to the following URL http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/newxenaland/VM/Index.html So far I only have the page linked from the What's New page Jester ----------------- From the Chakram-Refugees mailing list: Subject: [chakram-refugees] Review Auckland Vagina Monologues http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?thesection=entertainment&thesubse ction=&storyID=939528 Madeleine Sami, Lucy Lawless and Danielle Cormack bring to life the many women's stories of The Vagina Monologues. Trio capture vast range of experiences 16.02.2002 By FRANCIS TILL The Vagina Monologues: Three barefoot actors, 21 scenes, at least 100 characters, 32 orgasms, and one ubiquitous anatomical feature (with about a thousand names). First, the play is so well and deeply written that it deserves extraordinarily talented actors and the kind of insightful, transparent direction provided by Oliver Driver in this production. Because it is part-tract, it sometimes needs them. It gets them here. In the beginning, the stage lights go up before the house lights go down, putting us all in common space. We are confronted with three of New Zealand's finest actresses in street clothes, sitting in unremarkable chairs, looking out at the audience. There is a very long silence. "I bet you're worried," says one. The house erupts in laughter because, yes, we were. We shouldn't have been. Brilliantly conceived and realised characters begin tumbling out from that first moment, sometimes in isolation, often interacting, making exotic and challenging issues one might have thought were settled with the publication of Our Bodies, Ourselves. They weren't. In one scene, the women toss dozens of living euphemisms (pooki, Gladys Siegelman, toadie) across the stage at one another in a ribald contest - in another, they discuss what their vaginas might wear, were they to dress up (a beret, a pinafore). But it is the core monologues - the dozen or so stories told under solitary spotlights - that are the main focus here. Danielle Cormack and Madeleine Sami were made for these parts - so much so, it almost seems the roles were written for them. Each monologue is a vignette and each vignette is a life, complete and distinct from any of the others, with one exception: the vagina. Cormack's rendition of a very old virgin talking reluctantly about her "down theres" is a performance that puts even the text in shadow, and the repertoire of orgasms she displays as "The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy" elevates the moan from punctuation to language. Sami's tough-kid encounter with a seductive secretary is a production of its own, as well, and she takes the house away during a scene called "Reclaiming C-" - to the point that the audience not only chants her power word, but sings it, happily. If Lucy Lawless came third in the trio, it was not by much. Yes, she can act. No, there was not a single trace of Xena. She handled the lighter bits with obvious relish, and when she took on the character of a Bosnian woman who had been raped with a rifle, the death on her face, the emptiness of her voice, were shattering. When author Eve Ensler first started performing the 80-90 minute Vagina Monologues off-Broadway in 1996, she did it solo. She still does performances that way sometimes - in a special Valentine's Day documentary/performance on HBO that debuted in America last week, for example. But the play is more often (and perhaps more rationally) performed by a trio, as here with Cormack, Sami and Lawless, who morph from one persona to the next as they live out the stories Ensler developed out of interviews with more than 200 women about, well, their vaginas. Glenn Close has famously undertaken performances of this play, as have such wildly diverse women as Winona Ryder, Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Calista Flockhart, Cate Blanchett, Gillian Anderson, Kate Winslet and Ruby Wax. Overall, the play is hugely comic even though some horrifying material surfaces now and again - the monologues are interspersed with painfully explicit asides describing the ongoing practice of female circumcision, for example. In the end, though, those moments prove critical to the dramatic structure, fitting within the weave of the play as a series of hard, tight knots. Structurally, the play can be seen as a kind of rolling triptych, the central monologues leavened by frothy dialogues on one side and underpinned by recitations of appalling fact on the other. /////// Thelonius ------------------- *Sob*. :=( --Jackie ****************************************************** * Proud to have the same birthday as Lucy Lawless! * * * * "I think New Zealand geographically comes from * * ... Hawai'i." --Lucy Lawless, Late Show, 4/9/96 * * * * "Feel the fear and do it anyway." --Lucy Lawless, * * Evening Post, 7/4/98 * * * * "I LOVED forgetting it because it really made it * * so _live_ and so _immediate_...!!" * * --Barry Manilow, Manilow Talks CD, 1998 * * * * JACKIE YOUNG, JYOUNG@LAVA.NET * * * ******************************************************