NORTH COAST, Calif. — Local writers take note: There has never been a better opportunity to try your hand at playwriting.

Mendocino College is currently seeking short plays by local authors for production on campus in fall 2023.

One of the most exciting events of the college’s theater season is the annual Festival of New Plays.

Once again, theater professor Reid Edelman will use short plays written by local authors to teach directing and acting students about the joys and challenges of working with new scripts.

This production of student-written scripts is now in its 17th year, and the event has become a highlight of the college’s annual theater season.

Since the festival began, Edelman has worked with Communications Department professor and playwright Jody Gehrman to find and develop student-written plays.

Anybody residing in Lake, Sonoma or Mendocino counties is eligible to submit an original play.

“We clearly have an abundance of talented writers in this area,” said Gehrman, “but only a small percentage of them even think about writing a play. Playwrights aren’t born, they’re coerced by people like us to try it once. After seeing their work produced, most become addicted; it’s a tremendous high to sit in a theater and watch your ideas come to life.”

The deadline for submissions is Aug. 1.

There are no limitations in terms of theme or content, but small casts (two to five characters) and minimal technical requirements are recommended for optimal chances at production.

Scripts should have a running time of no longer than 10 minutes.

Electronic submissions should be saved as PDF files and sent to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. as an attachment.

For more information, contact Reid Edelman, 707-468-3172.

You can also mail your play to 1000 Hensley Creek Road, Ukiah, CA 95482.

Performances will be Nov. 2 to 5.

Auditions for actors will be in September.

MIDDLETOWN, Calif. — You are invited to a night of contemporary underground dance music straight out of the United Kingdom at Middletown Art Center this Saturday, July 8, from 8 to 10:30 p.m.

DJs Nic and Ami will play new and recent UK Garage, or UKG, Break Beat, Bass House and more for your dancing pleasure.

Whether you enjoy electronic music or love to dance, it will be a great night of fresh sounds. Plus, it’s MAC’s first DJ Dance since the pandemic began which is cause for celebration.

Nick Hay grew up in London during the heyday of punk rock and caught the early rave scene and warehouse dance parties in the late 80s. He DJ’d reggae, dancehall and jungle in the LA club scene in the 90s and has become a popular local DJ since moving to Lake County.

Emerging DJ, Ami Verhey, graduated from Middletown High School, then UC Davis with a degree in environmental sciences in 2022.

A lover of electronic/dance music, Verhey is excited to share music by contemporary artists like Interplanetary Criminal and Sammy Virji among others who are part of the UK Garage current momentum.

Listening to Hay discuss the evolution of UKG and Verhey’s enthusiasm for what they both describe as “groove with a bass anchor” was fascinating.

“Ami has an amazing instinct as a DJ, perhaps because he grew up immersed in a broad range of dance and world music,” said Hay, who is a kind of mentor to Verhey. “We’re excited to restart dances at MAC with new music and new energy!”

This Saturday is certain to be an exhilarating night of music and movement. And, you can be assured that there will be bass.

Tickets cost $15 or one or two for $25, and will be available at the door which opens at 7:45 p.m. Teens will be admitted for just $5.

Food by Goddess of the Mountain will be available as well as beverages for sale (21-up only).

The Middletown Art Center is located at 21456 Highway 175 (at the junction of Highway 29). For more information about Freedom to Dance, and other events and classes coming up at MAC visit www.middletownartcenter.org.

All new programs for the fall season on FOX network come in twos, as the content slate will add two new dramas, two new animated comedies and two new unscripted series to the lineup.

Ron Wade, CEO of FOX Entertainment, unveiled the fall season by noting the network’s “content portfolio continues to deliver balance and variety in its storytelling through the strength and stability of our returning favorites and tremendous creativity of our new series.”

Based on an acclaimed Italian series, “Doc” is a new medical drama centered on the hard-charging, brilliant Dr. Amy Elias, Chief of Internal and Family Medicine at Westside Hospital in Minneapolis.

After a brain injury erases the last eight years of her life, Amy must navigate an unfamiliar world where she has no recall of patients she’s treated, colleagues she’s crossed, the soul mate she divorced, the man she now loves and the tragedy that caused her to push everyone away.

The good doctor can rely only on her estranged 17-year-old daughter, whom she remembers as a 9-year-old child, and a handful of devoted friends, as she struggles to continue practicing medicine, despite having lost nearly a decade of knowledge and experience.

A pulse-pounding Hawaii lifeguard drama, “Rescue: Hi-Surf” follows the personal and professional lives of the heavy-water lifeguards who patrol and protect the North Shore of Oahu — the most famous and dangerous stretch of coastline in the world.

Each episode will feature the dedicated, heroic, and adrenaline-seeking first responders saving lives in the difficult and often life-threatening conditions of Hawaii’s Seven Mile Miracle.

An animated series like no other, “Krapopolis” is set in mythical Ancient Greece and centers on a flawed family of humans, gods and monsters that tries to run one of the world’s first cities without killing each other.

The series’ voice cast features Emmy Award winner Hannah Waddingham, Richard Ayoade, Matt Berry, Pam Murphy and Duncan Trussell.

In the series, Ayoade voices Tyrannis, the mortal son of a goddess. He’s the self-involved, narcissistic King of Krapopolis trying to make do in a city that lives up to its name.

Waddingham plays Deliria, Tyrannis’ mother, goddess of self-destruction and questionable choices. Within her extended Olympian family, forged in patricide and infidelity, she’s known as the trashy one.

Berry’s Shlub, Tyrannis’ father, half centaur and half manticore, is oversexed and underemployed and claims to be an artist and has literally never paid for anything, in any sense of that word, for his entire life.

Murphy’s Stupendous is Tyrannis’ half-sister, daughter of Deliria and a cyclops. Trussell plays Hippocampus, Tyrannis’ half brother, offspring of Shlub and a mermaid, is a hot mess, biologically speaking.

All-new animated comedy “Grimsburg” stars Emmy Award winner Jon Hamm (“Mad Men”) as Marvin Flute, a brilliant detective with opinions as eccentric as his taste, who can’t help but prioritize his own personal problems over the crimes he’s tasked with solving.

Now that he’s back in Grimsburg, a town where everyone has a secret or three, Flute will follow every lead he’s got to redeem himself with the ex-wife he never stopped loving, even if it means hanging out with the son he never bothered to get to know.

All-new game show “Snake Oil” is hosted and produced by Emmy and Golden Globe Award-nominated comedian David Spade and executive produced by Emmy nominee Will Arnett (“Arrested Development”).

In the show’s all-new original format, contestants are pitched unique products by convincing entrepreneurs, some of whom are showcasing real business ventures, while others are snake oil salesmen whose products are fake.

With the help of guest celebrity advisers, contestants must determine which products are real and which are a sham, for a chance to win life-changing money.

In each round of “Snake Oil,” contestants choose a pair of entrepreneurs and learn about their extremely unique (and often bizarre) products through visuals, a custom-made infomercial exclusively produced for “Snake Oil,” and by quizzing the business representatives.

Celebrity advisers offer their help and the contestants must then decide who is selling an authentic product and who is hawking a sham. Will they make the right choice or be duped by snake oil?

The all-new music guessing game show “We Are Family” is hosted and executive produced by Jamie Foxx and co-hosted by his daughter, Corinne Foxx.

Showcasing non-famous relatives of celebrities performing duets with their hidden famous family member, the game show will feature a studio audience composed entirely of 100 contestants playing through multiple rounds of clues.

The objective of the gameplay for the contestants is to win up to $100,000 each by correctly guessing which celebrity the performer is related to before they are revealed.

Celebrities appearing on “We Are Family” will range from musicians and professional athletes to actors and beyond. Premiere dates for all the new programs are yet to be announced.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

KELSEYVILLE, Calif. — This Sunday, July 2, is the Fiddlers' Jam at the Ely Stage Stop.

Gates open at 11 a.m. There is plenty of parking in the grove and the event is free.

Bring the entire family for an afternoon of fresh-cooked hamburgers, hot dogs, ice cold beer, wine, apple pie, and classic music that has its roots in love-of-country and freedom.

The Ely Stage Stop & Country Museum is located at 9921 Soda Bay Road (Highway 281) in Kelseyville.

Football will occupy two nights of the week on NBC when the fall season gets underway.

“Big Ten Saturday Night” arrives in prime-time as some of the most storied programs in college football battle for conference supremacy.

For a record 12 consecutive years, “NBC Sunday Night Football” has held the title of the number one prime-time television show, and of course, it’s back again to broadcast 20 regular-season games throughout the NFL season.

Three new series are set to premiere in the fall, two dramas and one multi-cam comedy, all of which will stream next day on Peacock along with the rest of NBC’s entertainment lineup.

In any given year, more than 600,000 people are reported missing in the U.S., and more than half that number are people of color, and the title “Found” suggests the objective of the series.

A public relations specialist, who was once herself one of those forgotten ones, and her crisis management team now make sure there is always someone looking out for the overlooked missing persons.

But unbeknown to anyone, this everyday hero is hiding a chilling secret of her own. The cast of “Found” includes Shanola Hampton, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Kelli Williams and Brett Dalton.

Based on the bestselling author Dan Ariely’s “Predictably Irrational,” the new drama series “The Irrational” involves Jesse L. Martin as a world-renowned leader in behavioral science.

Martin lends his expertise to an array of high-stakes cases involving governments, law enforcement and corporations with his unique and unexpected approach to understanding human behavior.

Starring Jon Cryer, “Extended Family” is a new comedy series about an amicable divorce where the couple, Jim and Julia, decide to continue to raise their kids at the family home while taking turns on who gets to stay with them.

Navigating the waters of divorce and child-sharing gets more complicated for Cryer’s Jim when Trey, the owner of his favorite sports team, enters the picture and wins Julia’s heart.

When you think about it, “Extended Family” has echoes of “Two and a Half Men” for Jon Cryer, in which he was an uptight divorced chiropractor, sharing custody of his son, and living at his brother’s beachfront Malibu house.

It will be interesting to see if Cryer proves to be as neurotic and anxious as he was in his role of Alan Harper living with his hedonistic brother Charlie (Charlie Sheen).

Tom Hanks will narrate an unscripted entertainment series, “The Americas,” which will also feature music by two-time Oscar winner Hans Zimmer, the German composer who scored films that include “The Lion King” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series.

“The Americas” is an incomparable project that will employ revolutionary filmmaking technology to showcase the wonders, secrets and fragilities of the Americas, Earth’s largest landmass and the only one to stretch between the North and South poles.

Building off the success of “America’s Got Talent: The Champions” and “America’s Got Talent: All-Stars” comes the next special edition of the world’s most successful TV franchise.

Last year, “All-Stars” was the number one new alternative series of the season in both the 18-49 demographic and total viewers. The new series so far is referred to as “Untitled America’s Got Talent Series.”

The iconic game of “Deal or No Deal” returns and is unlike anything you have ever seen before.

The new format transports audiences to the Banker’s private island where he makes the rules and there are twists behind every palm tree.

Hidden on the island are over 100 cases with millions of dollars split between them, which teams must retrieve so that they can play a game of Deal or No Deal against the Banker. The island setting results in the new version to be titled “Deal or No Deal Island.”

Only one team will survive until the very last episode, where they’ll compete to beat the Banker for the biggest prize in “Deal or No Deal” history. Howie Mandel serves as an executive producer, but the host is as of now unknown.

While CBS was bestowed the title of “America’s Most-Watched Network” for the fifteen consecutive season, NBC claims to have more shows in the top 20 than any other network in the key 18-49 demographic.

NBC asserts that it is home to the number one unscripted program “The Voice,” the number one broadcast drama “Chicago P.D.,” the top entertainment program with “Saturday Night Live,” and top new comedy with “Night Court.”

As part of NBC’s rolling development cycle, the following projects have been picked up to pilot with decisions yet to be made on series greenlights — comedies “Non-Evil Twin” and “St. Denis Medical,” and the drama “Wolf.”

You won’t have to wait until the fall for new programs. “Chicago Fire” is on hiatus during the summer, but “LA Fire & Rescue” will fill the void as a docuseries about the front lines of Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Another summer show is “Hot Wheels: Ultimate Challenge,” a car makeover competition based on one of the world’s most popular toys.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

You may have heard about the ambitious $600 million statewide initiative Community Economic Resilience Fund, or CERF, launched by Gov. Newsom to promote a sustainable and equitable recovery from the economic distress of COVID-19.

CERF will support new plans and strategies to diversify local economies; create high quality, broadly accessible jobs; and support the transition to a carbon-neutral economy.

Redwood Region Resilient Inclusive Sustainable Economy, or RISE, is one of 13 CERF regions in California, and comprises Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake and Mendocino counties, and tribal lands.

Here, Regional Convener California Center for Rural Policy, together with Outreach & Community Engagement partner North Coast Opportunities and Fiscal Agent Arcata Economic Development Corp., is bringing together diverse groups of partners to create inclusive planning tables as part of our region's planning phase.

At the end of the planning phase, Redwood Region RISE will identify priorities and projects to put forth for funding in the implementation phase.

To boost the Redwood Region RISE’s shared identity and to give communications a cohesive, recognizable look & feel, the organization is seeking a logo from a local artist.

RRRISE will pay for the logo creation. The logo should feature designs or images representing Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino counties, and tribal lands. A nod to the region's majestic redwood trees, and the acronym “RISE” could be a nice touch.

Themes to highlight include equitable economic development, cooperation, environmental justice, carbon-neutrality, and thriving-wage opportunities for our community.

Submissions can be sent to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by July 10.

You can find more information on the organization’s website.