A LOCAL OSCAR CONNECTION: If you can name the winner of any Academy Award for best live-action short, you are a true Oscars devotee. Still, plenty of big-name directors and actors got their starts working in shorts. UNT grad Marian Brock is one of those actors. She stars in God of Love, which is up for best live-action short this year. “This is truly the greatest blessing I have ever had in my career,” Brock tells The North Texan. “I worked very hard, and I am very proud of that, and to have it come to fruition is just so awesome, so inspiring, and I am still completely awestruck.” You’ll be able to catch God of Love as an extra on the 127 Hours DVD, which is out March 1. And for more Oscar talk, be sure to take a listen to the podcast of Wednesday’s first hour of Think, during which Chris Kelly, Chris Vognar and I batted around the major categories.

ON THE CLOCK: It’s no secret that the key to comedy is timing. And that timing is especially crucial when you’re staging a farce, as Circle Theatre is doing with Boeing-Boeing. In a farce, all those unexpected entrances and exits have to happen at the exact right time or the joke doesn’t work. “Comedy has to run on a clock and be very rigid. But it has to look really easy,” Boing-Boing director Robin Armstrong tells dfw.com. “It needs to look like Fred Astaire dancing. Everybody should go, ‘Oh, I could do that.’ But, of course, very few people can.” Catch the show through April 2.

QUOTABLE: “The gesture is an extension of a conductor’s personality and how they conceptualize the music, not something learned and practiced in a mirror. I learned on the job, so to speak.”

– Dallas Opera guest conductor Marco Zambelli, who leads the current production of Romeo and Juliet, which runs through Sunday. Read more from Zambelli in his theaterjones.com Q&A.