For the first time in a while, we have no direct international input. For the July/August column, I’d like to publish exclusively international updates.


For now, we’ll begin in New York City: Holly Webber’s comedy, Pratfalls, which won the Playwrights First Award in 2008, will play at the Abingdon Theatre, opening April 27 (see groundupproductions.org). Holly writes: “It’s a play about falling down, set on a rooftop in Brooklyn, with a middle-aged comedian as its central character. My 3-year-old son Wogene Jesse Webber, adopted in Ethiopia in 2010, started preschool this year and is already a true New Yorker who loves eating bagels, hailing cabs and hanging out in Central Park. He also has the soul of a performer, and when he heard about my show he said, ‘Why not I be in your play?’ and started doing pratfalls. I told him maybe the next one.”


From New York’s capital, Albany, Mary Frances Sabo is now adding to her lawyering and mothering with a service project at a soup kitchen for the homeless for the local Dartmouth club. She adds: “I took two of my kids to a Dartmouth/RPI hockey game in Troy near my home. I wasn’t sure what to expect as I only went to one hockey game in Hanover. It was a lot of fun. We were outnumbered so sat with the family of one of the players, Nick Walsh ’12.”


Virginia Rhoads is an ex-investment banker and now a personal fulfillment guide for a firm she and her husband started—Jempe Center (www.jempecenter.com). She writes from Washington State, “We’ll be leading our inaugural two-week trip to Chilean Patagonia this coming November for a select group of our life/leadership development clients. I am feeling fortunate to partner with my husband in our business.”


Melinda Lopez is in northern Massachusetts but visited Cuba in November on a trip combining research for her play, Becoming Cuba, set during the Cuban War of Independence. “Closer to home, I’ve helped found Munroe Saturday Nights, a performance venue bringing high-quality performance, play readings and poetry slams to metro-west Boston. I went snowboarding at the Dartmouth Skiway—why did I never go during school? It’s great! Visited campus and there was no snow! Too weird to see brown grass on the Green in late February.


Christina Porshe and her son engaged in an auspicious mother-son bonding: “My son and I both enrolled in Brazilian jujitsu this fall. I took a break for Christmas and after many plaintive entreaties I re-enrolled this past month and my chin is looking a little rough. I still am not ready to complete a cartwheel, but I executed my first effective takedown last week (it was not against my son) before I was vanquished.” Her son is 5.


Maybe Christina’s son will some day impress Genevieve, the 6-year-old daughter of Sarah Wauters and husband Steve. Sarah writes from Santa Monica, California: “My career has been a constant adventure, working after law school as a corporate transaction attorney and then as an entertainment attorney at MGM, Polygram Filmed Entertainment and then on my own. I used the freedom of sole practice to work with filmmakers and produce films, but eventually I launched my dream career of being a photojournalist and photo-artist. I shot on assignment all over the country for publications such as The Washington Post, Wired Magazine, Teen People, Elle, etc. However, once my 40s loomed, I thought, maybe I better think about having a family and staying home long enough to do so! I signed on with a renewable energy company starting at the bottom (yikes!). I head up the new southern California office for my company, Sun Light & Power, which designs and builds solar power and solar hot water systems for commercial entities.”


—Mark Greenstein, 117F Brittany Farms, New Britain, CT 06053; (860) 224-6688; msg@ ivybound.net; Davida (Sherman) Dinerman, 12 Kings Row, Ashland, MA 01721; (508) 231-8813; davida@dinerman.com