Word: mcdonnell
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...American trainers. With 700,000 Afghan civilians--out of a population of 27 million--believed to be armed, new recruits have plenty of experience at target practice. Getting guns for practice, however, is another matter. "Believe it or not, we have difficulty getting weapons here," says Lieut. Colonel Kevin McDonnel, commander of the American special-forces battalion tasked with training the nucleus of the army. The privates often have to settle for weapons simulation. During practice, they yell "Bang!" instead of firing blanks. As TIME has reported, U.S. troops have raided Afghan villages hoarding Taliban weapons to get guns...
...them soldiers or find them other work. (Barialai also wants a bigger army than the 60,000 envisioned by the Americans; his immediate boss, Fahim, wants any force to include his troops.) The U.S. trainers, at least, are highly motivated to succeed, knowing their homecoming depends on it. Says McDonnel: "If you ask me to compare this to places where we've done this before, I'd say there's a lot more at stake here because this must succeed. This mission is a must-win thing." Another key but difficult goal is creating an army that ordinary Afghans--from...
Heller cannot be blamed for the script's shortcomings, but her staging decisions accentuate the play's negative qualities. Producing Chicago in the Leverett House Old Library is a serious mistake. Although Heller and choreographer Allison McDonnel cleverly incorporate Leverett's stairwells into the action, the choice of venue leaves almost no room for the 18 actors. Chairs for the audience and the four-piece band swallow the majority of the available stage space; the side aisles should have been opened to provide the dancers with an outlet for movement. As is, the concentration of bodies results in our hearing...
Although several of the actors bump into each other in the course of Chicago, McDonnel deserves credit for keeping the on-stage mayhem to a minimum. She shouldn't have to work this hard, but Heller insists on the hackneyed technique of inserting the chorus into virtually every song and ending most numbers with the entire company surrounding the lead singer. These techniques should have been used more sparingly...
William R. Grant, education writer for the Detroit Free Press, and Michael J. Kirk, public affairs director for Seattle television station KCTS will also spend next year at Harvard, as will Lynda M. McDonnel, a business and labor reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune, and Judith Nichol, Maryland editor of the Washington Post...