A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant is a satirical musical about Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard, written by Kyle Jarrow from a concept by Alex Timbers, the show's original director. The one-act musical lasts about an hour. Jarrow based the story of the musical on L. Ron Hubbard's writings and Church of Scientology literature. The musical follows the life of L. Ron Hubbard as he develops Dianetics and then Scientology. Though the musical pokes fun at Hubbard's science fiction writing and personal beliefs, it has been called a "deadpan presentation" of his life story. Topics explored in the piece include Dianetics, the E-meter, Thetans, and the story of Xenu. The show was originally presented by Les Freres Corbusier, an experimental theatrical troupe and debuted in November 2003 in New York City, where it had sold-out Off-Off-Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. Later performances have included Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Atlanta and Philadelphia. Productions of A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant in 2003, 2004 and 2006 were well received. The musical received an Obie Award for the 2003 New York production, and director Alex Timbers received a Garland Award for the 2004 Los Angeles production. The play also received positive reviews in the press.

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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1896: Glasgow Subway, the third oldest metro system in the world after the London Underground and the Budapest Metro, began operations in Glasgow, Scotland. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Subway)

1911: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team became the first people to reach the South Pole. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen)

1918: The German Empire's defeat in World War I, and the stated fact that none of the Allies would ever accept a German-born prince as the King of Finland, led Frederick Charles to renounce the throne. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Frederick_Charles_of_Hesse)

1962: NASA's Mariner 2 became the world's first spacecraft to successfully fly by Venus. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_2)

1995: The Dayton Agreement was signed in Paris, France to end the Yugoslav wars in the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayton_Agreement)

_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:

dodecahedron: (geometry) A polyhedron with twelve faces; the regular dodecahedron has twelve regular pentagons as faces (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dodecahedron)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

I had determined to go as far as declaring in abstruse and puzzling utterances the future causes of the "common advent", even those truly cogent ones that I have foreseen. Yet lest whatever human changes may be to come should scandalise delicate ears, the whole thing is written in nebulous form, rather than as a clear prophecy of any kind. -- Nostradamus (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nostradamus)