They say practice makes perfect, but Jeff Ware might beg to differ.
After more than 30 years of practice as a working actor – all the years on stage, the bit parts in television shows, the movie roles – Ware is well aware of the reality of his craft. He knows the learning never really ends.
“Acting is really like plumbing or like woodcutting,” said Ware ’74, theatre, who is appearing this month and next in CenterStage’s production of Motti Lerner’s The Murder of Isaac. “It’s a craft. You have to practice it.”
Given the challenge of his current role as Eliahu – an Orthodox Israeli ex-soldier hospitalized with post-traumatic stress disorder, for which he studied endlessly the history of fundamentalism in Israel – it’s a good thing Ware has never been one to rest on his laurels.
The son of two actors, Ware didn’t actually realize his interest in the “family business” until he was 19. As a freshman at Ohio University, it took getting incredibly sick at a rock festival – and a semester of recovery and deep reflection – for him to discover his love for theatre.
“I’d always been around (acting), but I was a wise guy. I thought I was going to be a lawyer,” he said. “When I decided to act, I knew I needed to change schools.”
Ware’s father, whose family was from Baltimore, pointed him in the direction of UMBC. As a transfer student, Ware immediately took to the close-knit theatre department, learning as much about the technical aspect of the stage as acting itself.
In his senior year, Ware competed for acting scholarships at the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival, earning regional “best actor” accolades for his performances from Hatful of Rain and Constantinople Smith. He later competed nationally, winning enough scholarship money to study at the Webber Douglas Academy for Dramatic Art in London for three years.
As much as he loved London, however, Ware had already set his sights on New York.
“I came back to New York and I just started acting,” he said. “New York is a tremendous town, a big town. Everyone comes in thinking they’re a big shot. And then you get beat up for a little while.”
Over the years, Ware has appeared in a little bit of everything, from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, to episodes of “Law & Order,” to movies such as Stephen King’s Thinner and Teachers with Nick Nolte.
In The Murder of Isaac, which Ware describes as “a brilliant political expose” of politics in Israel, Ware’s character Eliahu participates in a “play within a play” about the actual assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. To prepare for the role, Ware researched not only the current political climate of Israel, but post-traumatic stress disorder and fundamentalist cliques within the orthodox Jew community.
Though he admits the show may seem heavy, Ware encourages viewers to come to it with open minds. As in all good theatre, he said, the audience must allow itself to be overcome by the story, the characters.
“It asks people to think a little bit. It asks them to use their imaginations,” he said. “But if we do our job, the audience should have a wonderful time.”
– Jenny O’Grady
Originally published February 2006

Not surprisingly, Robert Cartwright ’80 felt a bit of déjà vu watching his son, Ryan, cross the finish line at the America East Conference Championship in Binghamton, NY, last month.
Almost exactly 30 years before – as a freshman economics major at UMBC in 1975 – his team also came from behind to win the Mason Dixon cross country conference championship.
“This is such a coincidence, it’s just unbelievable,” said the elder Cartwright, of Perry Hall, an All Conference performer during his years at UMBC. “It sort of choked everybody up.”
The father-son connection was just the icing on the cake for this year’s men’s team. Picked fifth in the pre-season rankings, they placed five runners in the top 16 to take the Division I conference title. The team later finished 21st overall in the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional meet, with the women’s team placing 22nd.
Runners Izudin Mehmedovic of Columbia and J.J. Wetzel of Crofton earned all-conference accolades for their performances in the America East conference, while head coach Murray Davis and staff were selected as men’s coaching staff of the year for the conference.
“You know it’s really nice to be able to be successful at all levels,” said Davis, who is in his fifth season coaching the team. “So many things have to come together for a season like this.”
UMBC recently honored the 30th anniversary of the 1975 cross country team’s Division II conference title during Homecoming. Like the current men’s team, their predecessors were not favored to win.
“I was just a freshman. We were a young school and we didn’t have such a good record,” said Robert Cartwright. “Then, all of a sudden we started winning meet after meet, and nobody could really believe it.”
Cartwright’s son, Ryan, a senior information systems major, was UMBC’s sixth finisher during the American East conference and third for UMBC at the Mid-Atlantic Regional meet.
The pair started running together after Ryan was injured playing soccer in middle school. The father gave his son tips, and soon encouraged him to join his high school track team.
“I would run with him for about a year and I couldn’t keep up with him,” said Ryan. “Later on, though, I got better. He would say, ‘I was successful (running at UMBC), maybe you would be, too.’”
Over the years, the pair has accumulated numerous running medals and trophies. And though the elder Cartwright no longer competes, he can always look to the father-son awards wall in his basement for inspiration.
“He has a lot more awards than I ever got,” he said. “I’m really proud of him.”
– Jenny O’Grady
Originally published December 2005

Just a few months after graduating from UMBC, Justine Wagner, Spanish and economics ’04, traveled to Costa Rica on a Fulbright Research Award.
Wagner conducted research for a study on the effects of government social spending on poverty at the Institute of Economic Science Research of the University of Costa Rica with Professor Juan Diego Trejos, who has worked with UMBC Professor of Economics and Wagner’s mentor, Tim Gindling.
As part of her award, Wagner also had the opportunity to attend a Fulbright Enhancement Seminar in Honduras, where Fulbright Scholars studying in Central America presented their research. “The seminar was really the capstone of the whole experience; it was great to meet with other young scholars and discuss our work,” said Wagner.
At UMBC, Wagner took advantage of the many opportunities available to support research by undergraduates. As a sophomore, she spent a semester at the University of Granada. In her junior year, she began working with Gindling on his research on minimum wages in Costa Rica and received a Provost’s Undergraduate Research Award, which she used to travel to Costa Rica in order to collect data, talk with government policy makers and meet Costa Rican researchers. It was on this visit that she first met Trejos. Wagner then presented her work at Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day in her senior year, and published in an article in the 2005 UMBC Review.
Wagner said that her experiences at UMBC were invaluable and that she received a great deal of support. “The community of faculty and staff at UMBC want to see the best for every student,” she added.
“Justine was an excellent research partner,” said Gindling, who has received two Fulbright Fellowships to conduct research and teach in Costa Rica. “She has the ability to both work well with others and also the initiative to take a research problem and solve it on her own. The combination of fluent Spanish and knowledge of economics was especially valuable for our research project and for her ability to obtain the Fulbright Fellowship.”
Wagner is now using her skills and experience in economics at the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, where she is a research analyst, but she is also interested in applying her interest in language and international affairs in a graduate program.
Originally published November 2005

The Human Rights Campaign is proud to present artist Jeff Sheng’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” series as part of DC FotoWeek.  This solo exhibition is the first to feature the photographs and stories of more than sixty servicemen and woman currently affected by the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law; the law that requires gay, lesbian and bisexual service members to remain silent about who they are.

This exhibition is the culmination of Sheng’s travels across the United States to over 25 states during a two-year span from 2009-2010 to photograph the series.  Utilizing the Internet and social networking, he connected with all of his subjects through his artist website and online word of mouth.  The mutual trust formed in this process became crucial to the work: the service members counted on the artist not to reveal their actual identities.

HRC is excited to take part in this year’s FotoWeek DC, a weeklong event in Washington D.C. that celebrates the transformative power of photography through the exhibition of inspiring and provocative images, diverse programming and collaboration with the local and international community.

The exhibition at the HRC headquarters features twenty framed images, along with two artist books highlighting the portraits and individual stories of over sixty currently serving military personnel. The exhibit will be open to the public from Nov. 8 – 10 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at HRC headquarters; 1640 Rhode Island Ave NW. Additionally, HRC will host coffee with the artist Monday, Nov. 8 at noon, and take part in Night Gallery, during which Sheng’s images will be projected onto the exterior of the building, on Wednesday, Nov. 10 at 5:30 p.m. Both events are open to the public.

Although voters were resoundingly focused on the economy this midterm election – and ranked social issues, to include same-sex marriage dead last– the so-called National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a Washington D.C.-based anti-gay, fringe organization, put an estimated $5 million into the 2009-10 election cycle to influence the outcome in dozens of federal and state races, according to campaign finance filings, NOM and press reports.

While NOM made significant investments this cycle, its electoral win/loss record is decidedly mixed. In fact, NOM lost more races than it won. NOM endorsed at least 29 candidates. As of Wednesday afternoon, NOM had lost 19 of these races, won eight, and the remaining two (the Minnesota governor’s race and a New Hampshire statehouse candidate) were undecided. With the exception of a judicial election they hijacked in Iowa, NOM lost its most expensive and high-profile gambits in California and New Hampshire and all of its races in Maine and the District of Columbia. And it fought campaign finance laws all along the way.

Read the full analysis of NOM’s 2010 activities.