4:45 p.m., Oct. 24, 2002--Wilmington native B.J. Ward will bring her hilarious show “Stand-Up Opera” back to her home state for the first time on Friday, Oct. 25, as she kicks off the University of Delaware’s 2002-2003 Performing Arts Series. The show begins at 8 p.m. in Mitchell Hall, and Ward’s first voice teacher, ninety-something Francis Haut of Wilmington plans to attend.

Mixing stand-up comedy, a cabaret sensibility and classic arias, Ward, and her husband-director Gordon Hunt, produce a show that the New York Times calls “hip and funny.” The Los Angeles Times calls Ward a “soprano with shtick” who delivers “arias with attitude.”

After graduating from Mt. Pleasant High School, Ward traveled to New York City, where she landed the original off-Broadway role as The Girl in the “Fantasticks.” She has continued to work consistently in theatre, opera and television, appearing frequently in guest spots on shows like “Mad About You” and “Frasier.” Although she downplays her work as a voiceover artist, she can currently be heard as the voice of Velma in “Scooby Doo,” as Betty Rubble on “The Flintstones” and on hundreds of other cartoon voices and commercials.

As a teenager, Ward often performed with the Wilmington Drama League and had a summer apprenticeship in Arden. She studied opera in New York on a DuPont scholarship.

An original member of The Groundlings Improv Troupe in Hollywood with Phil Hartman and Pee Wee Herman, she has worked with such composers as Stephen Sondheim and Barry Manilow. She claims to be the only living opera singer to be both a licensed pilot and a former Playboy Bunny.

Before the show, a special dinner is being offered to theatre patrons at 5 p.m. at the Blue & Gold Club on Kent Way in Newark. The menu includes coconut-crusted chicken with pineapple-mango salsa and grilled vegetable rosa over farfalle.

Tickets for the performance are $15 for the general public, $10 for UD faculty, staff, alumni and senior citizens and $6 for students and children. They are available from the Hartshorn Box Office by calling 831-2204. Box Office hours are Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Dinner reservations, at $17.50 for adults and $8.95 for children ages 5-11, may be made by calling 831-2582.

The University of Delaware 2002-03 Performing Arts Series is made possible, in part, by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency committed to promoting and supporting the arts in Delaware, as well as support by Barba & Reynolds Insurance Agency and Embassy Suites-Newark/Wilmington South.