Word: focused
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...alumni list reads like a Who's Who of modern comedy, from John Belushi and Alan Arkin to Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert - you wouldn't know it to look at its interior. The small, intimate club's black walls and stark stage are meant to keep the focus on the talent; the only signs of its pedigree are the photographs and signatures of the stars who once trod its boards on the walls backstage...
...Sills, a Fulbright scholar and former merchant marine, honed the Second City formula - an ensemble ethic and a focus on audience participation - with previous performance groups the Playwrights Theater Club and the Compass Players. Sills and Sahlins' professional relationship began while producing shows at the Playwrights Theater Club, and Alk had worked with Sills at Gate of Horn, a folk-music club in Chicago. When the three came together to build Second City, they stepped into an uncharted territory of comedy: improv did not exist outside of Sills and Spolin's projects. Comedy shows of that era were mostly rehearsed...
...Christmas, the conservative commentator recently reminded viewers, driven by those who "loathe the baby Jesus." This season, a holiday-décor company is marketing the CHRIST-mas Tree, a bushy artificial tree with a giant cross where the trunk should be. And the Colorado-based nonprofit Focus on the Family is continuing its Stand for Christmas campaign to highlight the offenses of Christmas-denying retailers. The campaign was launched, according to its website, because "citizens across the nation were growing dissatisfied with the tendency of corporations to omit references to Christmas from holiday promotions." (See pictures: "Have a Very...
...growing group of Christians, the focus on the commercial aspect of Christmas is the greatest threat to one of Christianity's holiest days. "It's the shopping, the going into debt, the worrying that 'If I don't spend enough money, someone will think I don't love them,' " says Portland, Ore., pastor Rick McKinley. "Christians get all bent out of shape over the fact that someone didn't say 'Merry Christmas' when I walked into the store. But why are we expecting the store to tell our story? That's just ridiculous...
...Christmas came to McKinley four years ago, when he was sitting around with some of his pastor friends and they realized they were all dreading Christmas. "None of us like Christmas," he says, adding, "That's sort of bad if you're a pastor." Instead of helping their congregations focus on the season of Advent and prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ, the pastors found themselves competing with a secular consumerism that made December the hardest time to make their message heard...