Orange County High School of the Arts

Last week, I judged a competition where entrants had to have a grabbing lead, a dynamic storytelling style and a wealth of information condensed into a finite number of words. I'm talking, of course, about Poetry Out Loud. For the second straight year,...

The national touring company of the iconic musical "Cats" has returned to Orange County (it's at Segerstrom Center for the Arts until Sunday), and happily for one of the feline performers, she has been able to finally curl up in her own bed at night....

When Chris Wink, Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton first applied the blue greasepaint in the late 1980s in New York City, it's hard to imagine that phenomenon that would become Blue Man Group. Today, millions of fans around the world have become mesmerized...

I know many of you are in the midst of graduations right now. We have two in our house, as our daughter moves from St. Bonaventure School into Orange County High School of the Arts and our son — gulp — is off to college after graduating from...

The old adage "Mother is always right" couldn't have been more dead-on for 13-year-old Cole Fletcher. Cole's mother always wanted him to sing John Lennon's "Imagine" during a singing contest, but it wasn't in his key, he said. He chose other songs for...

They say if you want a job done right, give it to a busy person. Well, Tim Nelson's one of the busiest, and he's been getting it done right for the past 30 years. At the moment, Nelson — whose many titles include director and musical director of...

It wasn't B.J. Thomas, exactly, but musical raindrops seemed to be falling in a white-walled rehearsal room next to Walt Disney Concert Hall, courtesy of Milo Talwani, one of the L.A. composers least likely to write melody, let alone ear candy, into a...

Newport Beach teenager Annie Fleming was born at Hoag Hospital. In the last two years she's spent more than 300 hours there. And on Thursday, she celebrated her 18th birthday there. For about two years, Annie has volunteered as a candystriper at Hoag,...

Julia Wolfe, 12, isn't waiting for a degree in marine biology to start helping pinnipeds. The Newport Beach resident chose to focus her bat mitzvah project on seals and sea lions by raising money for the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach....

April, May and June fly by. The first half of April, most of us suffer the angst that goes with income tax preparation. It is also the month I lost my husband, John A. “Buck” DePaoli. Two other beloved Holtville folks died in the same 24-...

Recently several family members had the pleasure of attending granddaughter Devon’s graduation. These included grandsons Bo, of South Carolina, and Eric, who lives in Holtville. The ceremony was held at the Cottonwood Church in Los Alamitos. The...

If you recently found a disposable camera inside a pizza box and followed directions to take a picture, chances are your face has been seen by more than one viewer. Filmmaking duo Austin Dodge, 18, and Elliot Barbernell, 14, filmed a short movie Nov....