Arts & Entertainment

The Joshua M. Freeman Foundation announced this week that the Freeman Stage at Bayside is set to celebrate its fifth season of bringing arts and entertainment to Sussex County. The Freeman Stage has attracted an average of 25,000 audience members each year in its first four seasons with offerings of dance, theater, live music and children’s performances. Located 4 miles from the Atlantic Ocean west of Fenwick Island, the Stage has partnered to present more than 200 different performing artists, which includes both local and national acts.

Local students are transforming Selbyville with a town-wide art exhibition, honoring Kids Art Month.

For the eighth year, Selbyville Community Club will display children’s art at the Selbyville Public Library in a month-long celebration. Kids Art Month is observed nationwide, but the Selbyville group is particularly proud of its local event.

Fenwick Island’s Sue Studz already knows that oven #19 at the 45th Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest is hers. Surrounding her in the Peabody Orlando Hotel ballroom at the end of March will be 99 other ovens and simulated kitchens — but no running water and none of their own ingredients or cooking utensils.

Southern Delaware can see the benefit when a dynamic entrepreneur has an advanced idea that fits well into the region’s existing strengths. And Pennsylvanian Robert Weening has exactly that beneficial combination in mind, pairing innovative science with agricultural production.

Prizes were recently awarded to the local teens for writing, designing and decorating an original love poem as if it appeared on a greeting card.

Winners received a journal with a commemorative bookplate. The first-place winner also received a $50 Tanger Outlet gift card, and the second-place winner received a $25 Tanger Outlet gift card.

Nearly three dozen students from the Indian River High School Band were set to perform in the junior and senior County Band this week, on March 1 at Cape Henlopen High School.

Don Murray and I met at World Gym. (Folks, don’t you think World Gym should give me a free membership for all the times I’ve mentioned them in this column?) I must be slipping, though, because it took me a long time to find out that Don was the chief cook in his household.

The Academy of Magical Arts in Hollywood, the operating arm of the Magic Castle, has announced that Rich Bloch of Millville’s Dickens Parlour Theatre, is one of five nominees for 2012 Stage Magician of the Year.

Gallery One in Ocean View this week announced their new theme show, called “Games People Play,” which will run from March 8 through March 26.

“Games can stimulate the brain of the participants to image, problem solve and interact with other people. The artists of Gallery One each responded to this theme with their own personal experiences,” representatives noted.

Chess is a game of strategy, tactics and careful calculations – something that the students at Lighthouse Christian Academy in Dagsboro know very well. Next month, the team – composed of more than a dozen elementary- and middle-school students – will head back to Owings Mills, Md., for the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) Chess Tournament, to put their minds to the test in hopes of improving on last year’s solid performance.

In August 1949, Ruth and Herman Koenig moved to Millville from West Winfield, N.Y., to be teachers at the Lord Baltimore School. The two had met in school and attended West Winfield High School together.

Applications are now being accepted for the 55th annual Little Miss Georgetown and 7th annual Junior Miss Georgetown Pageant. The program this year will be held on Sunday, March 11.

An earthquake, Hurricane Irene and her tornados could not keep ABC’s “Extreme Makeover-Home Edition,” Schell Brothers and a few thousand volunteers from building the Jusst Sooup Ranch in only one week last September, yet a lull in contributions could cast a cloud over the ministry’s near- and long-term goals to care for hundreds of Delaware’s hungry and homeless each week.

Robots aren’t just for mad scientists and Jedi knights anymore.

Ashley Conroe, an Indian River High School senior, formed the Retro Robots team to compete in Delaware’s own robotics tournament.

America’s pastime will soon be returning to Roxana, as online registration for Lower Sussex Little League kicked off earlier this month. In February, the Lower Sussex Complex will open for walk-in registration, as well. And with a few new age changes to the divisions, Lower Sussex Little League (LSLL) president Tracy Littleton is expecting another successful season for young baseball and softball players throughout the area.

The first wealth is health.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Since he was in first grade at Lord Baltimore Elementary School, Will Devokees knew that he wanted to be an actor.

Bob Lougheed is lucky to be alive – he knows it, he embraces it and he lives each and every day like it could be his last on Mother Earth.

Wondering what to do with those rechargeable batteries that live inside laptops, cell phones, power tools, cordless phones and more once they outlive their “chargeableness”? There is no need to dump them in the landfill. Simply take them to the local AT&T authorized retailer in the Millville Town Center in Millville.

How do you celebrate the holidays? Are family-friendly festivities your goal, or does a warm, jazzy atmosphere light your fire?