February 6, 2004:
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Focus Rhode Island airs on WRNI 3-4p.m. every Friday, Saturday 6-7 p.m., and Sunday 8 - 9 p.m. Audio of the entire show is archived on the web two hours after the end of Friday's broadcast. The archived programs are streamed in the Real Audio Format.
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Fiscal Fitness Plan
Governor Carcieri has proposed a plan that he says will save Rhode Island 180 million dollars per year. The so-called “Fiscal Fitness” plan includes 140 cost-cutting recommendations intended to improve public services and make the government more efficient. We talk to Clark Green, Governor Carcieri’s deputy chief of staff and project manager for the Fiscal Fitness team.

Childhood Poverty Conference
This weekend, Providence hosts the 13th Annual Action Conference of the Rhode Island Campaign to Eliminate Childhood Poverty. We speak with AFL-CIO vice present and keynote speaker for the conference, Linda Chavez-Thompson, who encourages cooperation between labor unions and community groups in order to reach out to the impoverished.

Hope Theater to Perform in Scotland
Drama students at Hope High School in Providence are among 40 high schools nationwide who have been chosen to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland next August. We speak with Hope drama director Christine Auxier about her students’ decision to adapt and perform their own version of the old English classic Beowulf.

Political Roundtable
Scott MacKay, political writer for the Providence Journal
Maureen Moakley, chairperson of the political science department at the University of Rhode Island.

Aaron Siskind
Photographer Aaron Siskind began his career as a
documentary photographer before doing pioneer work in abstract, metaphorical imagery. One of the Rhode Island School of Design’s most-celebrated former professors, Siskind’s work is currently on display at the school’s museum of art. We speak with friends and collectors of his work and with Jan Howard, curator of Interior Drama: Aaron Siskind’s Photographs of the 1940’s.

Theater Reviews
Wallace Shawn explores the passing of evil thoughts from one generation to the next in Aunt Dan and Lemon – a play that shocked New York audiences when it premiered there in 1985. WRNI theater critic Bill Marx reviews the play’s 2004 incarnation, now showing at the Gamm Theater in Providence. And arts writer Bill Gale discovers that the more things change, the more they remain the same in the 2004 revival of Moliere’s 1672 play, The Learned Ladies, showing at the 2nd Story Theater in Warren.

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To Contact Focus Rhode Island:
email: focusri@wrni.org
phone: 401-351-1699