Theatre Palisades regularly draws from a wide pool of talented actors living throughout Southern California, but with the new production of ‘Moon Over Buffalo,’ casting came about closer to home. Two Palisadians’Martha Hunter and Julia Whitcombe’ star in this comedy directed by Sherman Wayne and produced by Pat Perkins. The play centers on George (Jack Coppock) and Charlotte Hay (Martha Hunter), fading stars of repertory theater in 1950’s Buffalo. The couple have just lost their last chance at stardom’leads in a Frank Capra movie. To make matters worse, their agent is smitten with Charlotte and the company ingenue is pregnant by George. Add to the mix an almost deaf grandmother/costume mistress (Julia Whitcombe’s part) and a forgetful weatherman/fianc’ and the plot thickens. When the agent calls to say Frank Capra will be attending the matinee, George is missing and the company can’t figure out which play they are supposed to be performing, ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’ or ‘Private Lives.’ Misunderstandings, misplaced affections and missing persons work together to hilarious effect. This is Martha Hunter’s second appearance on the Theatre Palisades’ stage. Last fall, she was a force in another farce, playing the real inspector in ‘Inspecting Carol,’ also directed by Sherman Wayne. Hunter brings to the role of Charlotte a lifetime of acting experience, beginning with skits and later musicals at Brentwood Presbyterian Church as a child. ‘I remember doing ‘The Boyfriend’ and singing a duet with Dick Van Dyke.’ While living in Malibu for 15 years, Hunter was active in Malibu Summerstage. All the while, she worked regularly in commercials, TV and film, including a supporting role in the movie ‘Something’s Gotta Give.’ Hunter moved to the Palisades eight years ago. Acting is truly all in the family, with both of her daughters studying drama, one as a graduate student in London and the other as a junior at Northwestern University. Hunter laughingly describes her husband, Craig, as involved in a different kind of dramatic art: the law. Hunter is thrilled to have landed parts at Theatre Palisades, and relishes the community flavor the venue offers. ‘It shows there’s support and talent right here in the Palisades,’ says Hunter, referring not only to herself, but also to fellow actor Julia Whitcombe, who plays her mother in the production, and to three Corpus Christi eighth graders who are assisting with costumes and props. Whitcombe’s long affiliation with Theatre Palisades began in the mid-1970s. Over the years, she’s garnered eight ‘Best Actress’ awards with the organization. She cites Eleanor in ‘Lion in Winter’ and Sister Mary in ‘Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You’ as her most memorable roles. ‘Moon Over Buffalo’ represents her 18th appearance on the Theatre Palisades stage. ‘Oh, look, oh, look, there’s an old lady part,’ Whitcombe jokes about her excitement to learn of the grandmother part in ‘Moon Over Buffalo.’ Whitcombe and her husband, John’who divide their time between living in the Palisades and Rifle, Colorado’have longstanding involvement with Theatre Palisades. After retiring as a chemical engineer, John supervised the construction of the theater in the early 1980s and Julia has served the company in various capacities for over two decades. Whitcomb’s other passion is her ongoing work recording textbooks for the blind. ‘You use lots of the same skills as being an actor,’ she comments. ‘Moon Over Buffalo’also stars actors Jack Coppock, Meredith Dinneen, Matt Landig, Holly Sidell, Warren Steinman, and Larry Sutton. The play opens on Friday, April 1 and continues through May 8 at Pierson Playhouse, 941 Temescal Canyon Rd. Performances run Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Ticket prices range from $9 to $15. Contact: 822-0463 or 567-9995.

Author Tanyo Ravicz will return to his hometown to read from and discuss his new book ‘Ring of Fire and Other Stories,’ an Alaskan adventure novella and short stories set in the northernmost state. The 1979 Palisades High School grad will speak about his book on Thursday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m. at Village Books, 1049 Swarthmore. This is Ravicz’s first published book, although he has been writing fiction for 20 years and has been published in magazines and periodicals. Ravicz’s family bought their home on Castellammare in 1964. For 30 years, they owned the Barrymore house, so called because John Barrymore once lived there. ‘It was a great old place across from the beach,’ Tanyo recalls. After PaliHi, Ravicz studied literature at Harvard University and graduated in 1984. A few years later, he and his wife-to-be Martina settled in Alaska. While living in Alaska, Ravicz was writing and immersing himself in local activities, such as fishing and hiking. He worked as a substitute teacher during the year, and as an emergency firefighter during the summer, and also spent time working in the fishing industry. His writing was informed by the many different characters he met. ‘There’s a different variety of people you get at the extreme end of the empire’less varnished, less smoothed down by education.’ ‘Ring of Fire’ was inspired by an article Ravicz read about a Saudi crown prince who traveled to Alaska to hunt brown bears, just after the Gulf War. ‘It caught my imagination: the collision of the two worlds,’ Ravicz says. In the novella, Prince Tariz, the crown prince of the Islamic monarchy of Rahman, arrives with his entourage to hunt at the wilderness lodge of Hank Waters, a reclusive master hunting guide. The tension builds as the Rahman entourage, accustomed to having their way, violate hunting laws in the Alaskan wilderness, and Waters and crew see how far they will go to accommodate them. The six stories are of modern Alaskan characters from all walks of life, many exploring romantic relationships. Many of the stories had been previously published in Bellowing Ark, a literary journal. Bellowing Ark, a small press in Washington state, also published his book. When Tanyo’s wife, Martina, became tired of the cold, they moved to Palm Springs, where she set up her law practice. The couple and their two children, Miranda, 12, and Kody, 7, continue to spend their summers on 15 acres on Kodiak Island, land which Ravicz had homesteaded. Ravicz cites many literary influences’Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Joyce, Mann, Maugham, Bellow, Steinbeck and Jack London. As far as what inspires him, Ravicz says ‘something triggers me, it comes out of something in my soul. Something you witness, hear, smell or recall fills you with a sense of relevance. Everybody has those experiences: writers just crawl away and scribble it down.’ Ravicz says writers explore ‘aspects of human nature that haven’t been explored before.’ He has received praise from authors Thomas Keneally, who compared the book to Styron’s first novel [‘Lie Down In Darkness’], and Judith Grossman, who said he ‘weaves his own way between Faulkner and Hemingway.’ Ravicz met Keneally and Grossman when he was briefly enrolled in the writing program at UC Irvine. Ravicz is currently working on a nonfiction essay as well as a ‘West Coast novel,’ which tells the story of a Mexican Indian migrant worker and his journey from Mexico to Alaska.

By JACQUELINE BRODY After five months of training, running with my parents at 6 a.m. before school, and long hikes on weekends in the Santa Monica Mountains, we were ready. My mom and I were on our way to climbing Banner Peak. Banner Peak is near Mammoth Lakes, California, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Our first day, we started at the Agnew Meadows trailhead in Devil’s Postpile National Monument. We hiked seven miles through the San Joaquin Valley up to Ediza Lake, our campsite. Since our campsite was so close to the lake, mom and I could sit by the water, draw pictures and whittle wood. We also made sundials, moon-dials and compasses. Did you know you could make a compass out of a straight pin, pocketknife, water and hair? At 4 a.m., with cold winds and a full moon, we set off up Ediza Creek towards Banner. Our headlamps helped us see where to step. We started by hiking up huge boulders that went on and on. During this time my mom realized she had lost her GPS that my dad had given her. That was good for me when later I lost my new pocketknife and sunglasses (I didn’t get in as much trouble). We finally got to one of the three glaciers on the mountain. As we got closer to it, I got more worried about having to climb it. Of course we would. Anyway, it was extremely windy on the glacier. It was like a huge wind tunnel. We had to wear a harness and climb up with crampons and ice axes. A couple of times the wind made us lose our balance and we had to dig our ice axes into the snow to keep from slipping down the glacier. At the top of the glacier, the saddle, we patted ourselves on the back and started our final climb to the peak. I thought we had finished the big boulder climbing earlier, but no, there were more boulders. At 12,000 feet I was getting really worn out. The higher we went, the bigger the boulders got. Soon we had to wear our harnesses and rock-climb a bit. My mom said it was only Class 3 climbing, which seemed pretty nasty to me. After a long time through rocks, rocks and more rocks, we made it to the summit! We were on the top of Banner Peak at 12,945 feet. Wondering on the way up if it would be worth it was pointless; the view was beautiful. I’m normally not afraid of heights, but at the top I wouldn’t stand up. My mom had to convince me to stand up for a picture. But you shouldn’t blame me; you probably would have felt the same thing. We wrote our name, date, age and inspirations in the Sierra Club ledger stashed in a metal ammunition box. I was anxious to start down the mountain because we were technically only halfway done with the day. On our descent I got my energy back. I also got a little hyper. We belayed down the glacier. My mom and I were so scared we found that singing Sheryl Crow songs helped distract us from our fears. We took a different route on the way back with fewer boulders. Yeah! It was fun to walk down and across the slippery rocks along the creek. Once I slipped and landed on my bottom. Other than that, it was probably the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. There were mini-waterfalls, moss and pretty yellow flowers. Just below the creek was a small glacier. Time for butt glissading! That was really fun. After getting back from our big trip we had hot cocoa and dinner; we read and then went to sleep. I learned a lot of things while climbing the mountain. I learned about sun cups (depressions in the snow surface casued by sun or warm, gusty wind), crevasses and berkshrund (a larger crevass). I learned that you don’t stink too badly after five days with no bath. I also learned how to work very hard towards a goal and how wonderful it is to accomplish that goal. I can’t believe I did it. I climbed Banner Peak!!! (Jacqueline Brody is 12 years old. She lives in the Palisades Highlands with her parents, Cindy and Mike, and her three sisters, Katherine, Madeline and Caroline. She is in the sixth grade at Calvary Christian School and is continuing her love of the Sierra Nevada Mountains by skiing on the Mammoth Mountain Ski Team on the weekends.)

By HARRIET KIMBLE WRYE This trip was a pregnant combination of awe-full and its close cousin awful. After returning from three peripatetic years traveling the globe, my husband and I had settled into our beloved Castellammare home of over 30 years and expunged the vile vibes of the Tenant from Hell by burning a lot of sage, refinishing floors and repainting. Forever uncured, though, the travel bug bit us once again when we heard about a wild tribal horse festival in the remotest corner of Tibetan Szechuan China, and so in July off we went. We flew from L.A. to Hong Kong to Kunming province in Southwestern China to spend a few days exploring the region’s fantastic geology and ethnic richness. Then heading north to Szechuan with our plane’s wings dipping dizzyingly close to the peaks, we dropped into the enchanted hidden Himalayan valley of Dzong Zhien, reportedly the mythical Shangri La of World War II fame. Several bumpy, winding days of four-wheeling took us onto the Himalayan plateau to witness an awesome annual Tibetan tribal gathering, the Litang Horse Festival. In this remote Tibetan area annexed by Red China, feudal costumes hidden from the Red Chinese takeover were donned for days of dancing. Men and women wore fur boots, tiger skin wraps, pendulous coral beads and hammered gold medallions while hundreds of gaily decorated Tibetan ponies and their fearless riders thundered across the plain, competing in races, stunts and archery feats, all at recklessly high speed. We saw more than one near-fatal accident, and one man dragged to death by his pony. Caught in a groundswell of Tibetan spectators, I was nearly clubbed to the ground by Chinese militia as the ages-old antipathy of the Chinese for the Tibetans surfaced. Following the festival, Jim and I set out with our Tibetan guide on a week-long trek into the remote Gorge of the Dongwang River, a tributary of the Yangtze. In this isolated but breathtaking part of Tibetan Szechuan, it turns out, adventure trekking is still practically unheard of, so we basically donned our hiking boots to become our guide’s outback guinea pigs. The first day’s ill-planned trek covered over 20 precipitous miles along a narrow gorge, with an altitude gain of over 5,000 feet. After 11 hours on the rugged trail, we were so done in when we reached the village where we were to pitch our tent on the flat roof of the village headman’s house that we begged just to fall into our sleeping bags sans supper and crash for the night. It occurred to me, however, to ask where the toilet was. (In China that means ‘Where’s the slit in the floor?’) Our host motioned to an anteroom off the roof. We went to check it out, Jim leading the way. I watched helplessly as the earthen roof collapsed under my husband and he fell three stories into, yes, the Tibetan toilet. Terrified that he might have been killed, I screamed out to him’and in vintage humor, Jim moaned back from the bottom of the pit, ‘Well, now you can really call me shithead.’ The fall netted three broken ribs, a badly torqued foot and no ordinary means for evacuation. After he was rescued, codeine allowed him fitful sleep, and in the morning we got to see how a true village works. Our host summoned all the strong young men for a pow-wow that resulted in a rather comically rustic litter. Fortunately we had more codeine, as broken ribs are very painful, especially as Jim had to be roped onto this litter of unplaned saplings. Twelve men formed three teams of four to take turns carrying him back out the same rugged 20 miles, while I begged for a mule which was only reluctantly proffered. (I later discovered why. No one in the village’s memory had ever dared ride an animal along that sheer gorge.) Eleven hours of alternating rain and sun later, our guides, the 12 men carrying Jim on his litter, and my mule and I dragged to the trailhead. From there we jostled seven hours by Jeep through the night to the ‘hospital’ in Shangri La’and the only available treatment of prayer and poultices, a noble tradition except when you require more. It took us another week for Jim to be able to tolerate the 23-hour plane trip home, where an orthopedist and an MRI diagnosed the trauma as a serious ‘Lis Franc’ dislocation requiring surgery to freeze the joints on the top of the left foot. Literally screwed, he spent 12 weeks on crutches. God doesn’t close a door without opening a window, and this catastrophe has opened our pores so wide we feel the whole universe coming in. We’re more grateful for our lives and medical care here, yet still uncured of the venomous bite of the travel bug that brings the awful and the awesome so poignantly into our lives. Initially the prognosis for hiking again with this rare injury was bleak, but Jim has been granted another of his nine lives which we recently celebrated with a five-mile hike in Temescal Canyon. (Dr. Harriet Wrye, a psychologist/psychoanalyst practicing here, and her husband Jim Wheeler, a retired commercial banker, have lived in Pacific Palisades for around 30 years. Their son, Gabriel, is a filmmaker in L.A., and their daughter, Ariel, is a bilingual elementary teacher in Echo Park. Both graduated from Palisades High. Harriet and Jim are inveterate adventure travelers, having climbed Kilimanjaro and peaks in the Andes and Himalayas, and immersed themselves in remote tribal cultures in Borneo, Irian Jaya, and the Amazon rainforest. Dr. Wrye is the author of ‘The Narration of Desire’ and numerous psychoanalytic articles.)