Dinner-Theater at CSI with Olympia Dukakis

Staten Island Advance - Sunday, November 25, 2007

A Dinner-Theater fund-raiser performance, starring Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Olympia Dukakis, will be held by the Friends of the College of Staten Island (CSI) on Saturday, beginning with dinner at 6 p.m., and performance at 8 p.m., followed by dessert and conversation with the actors. Tickets cost $100 per person and can be purchased by calling the CSI advancement office at 718 982-2365.

Olympia Dukakis will share the Center for the Arts Williamson Theatre stage with her actor husband, Louis Zorich, in a reading of "I Take Your Hand in Mine," a play by Carol Rocamora based on the love letters of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov and his actress wife Olga Knipper.

Event co-chairs are Nancy and Christopher Benbow of Ward Hill, and Christine and Peter Cea of Emerson Hill.

Funds raised from the event will go to the CSI Parthenon Project which involves the restoration of 12 plaster casts of the Parthenon's western frieze and their installation in the Atrium of the college's Center for the Arts.

A goal is to gain insight into the origins of the plaster casts so that students, staff, and visitors to CSI may enjoy them, and learn from them, college officials say.

The Friends of CSI dinner theater event is offered as part of "Island Culture: Near and Far," the 2007-2008 season at the Center for the Arts.

Reprinted here with permission from the