Monday,  January 21, 2013 • Vol. 13--No. 186 • 15 of 29 •  Other Editions

News from the

Medora Musical holding auditions this weekend

• MEDORA, N.D. (AP) -- Auditions for the 2013 Medora Musical will be held in Bismarck and the Fargo area this coming weekend.
• StageWest Entertainment and the Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation say the auditions will be Saturday at the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bismarck and Sunday at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn.
• The Medora Musical is an outdoor musical variety show held each summer in the Burning Hills Amphitheatre in the western North Dakota Badlands. Twelve singers are cast each season. Officials say they look for people who can sing, dance and act.
• Director Curt Wollan says the musical through the years has been able to draw exceptional talent from the Upper Midwest and Canada.

Digital age prompting closure of base theaters

• DIRK LAMMERS,Associated Press
• ELLSWORTH AIR FORCE BASE, S.D. (AP) -- Stacey Darling loves watching family movies at the Ellsworth Air Force Base theater in South Dakota because it's so much more affordable than taking her three children to the multiplex in nearby Rapid City.
• Darling, whose husband is an airman, has been catching second-run films on base for about 2 1/2 years, and was there Saturday for the theater's last showing -- a screening of the animated movie "Hotel Transylvania." The movie theater is among 60 around the globe run by the Army and Air Force Exchange Service that is screening its last picture show amid the industry's conversion to digital projection.
• "We always come out for the cartoons," said Darling, of Grand Forks, N.D. "We like the family movies."
• Darling said she wishes she could go to the theater even more now that her husband, Senior Master Sgt. David Darling, has deployed to southwest Asia.
• It's just not cost effective for the exchange service to invest the $120,000 per theater needed to convert from 35 millimeter film to the new format at the theaters that are being closed, said spokesman Judd Anstey. Sixty theaters will make the upgrade.

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