BROADWAY BOUND...Super-huge congratulations to John Farmanesh Bocca, local actor, director, drama teacher, and Monterey High graduate (class of '89), who just won a prestigious three-year directing fellowship to The Julliard School's Artist Diploma Program, which develops promising young directors for the new American theater. The program, which was created in 1995, accepts just two fellows every three years; there have only been eight graduates since its inception (and hundreds of applicants each time), making Farmanesh, 31, a member of quite an elite little club. He leaves for New York in September to pursue a individualized, multifaceted curriculum, "to fill in the blanks and push me down the road as a theater director and teacher," he says, fairly bouncing out of his seat in excitement; I could tell through the phone receiver (a reporter must be so careful in this post-Blair world). It was a fluke that Farmanesh even applied--he had taken a group of his Carmel- and LA-based drama students on an annual trip to New York, and was sitting in Julliard's lobby with a student too ill to take the tour that day, when he read a brochure about the fellowship and decided to apply. The next three years will launch Farmanesh on a new, star-studded road. Sky's the limit, John.

BEST IN SHOW...Monterey High student Kelli Osgood took home the "Best of Festival" award in Life in the Arts' second annual student film festival, sponsored by Longtime Productions. The all-high-school festival judged more than 100 entries and awarded first prizes and awards of excellence in five categories, including animation, documentary, commercial, narrative and music video, but organizer Marie Wainscoat said that Osgood's lyrical film about horses, Flight Without Wings--The Horse, needed its own category to do it justice. "It was a very unique film," Wainscoat says, explaining that Osgood wrote a poem about horses, which is read in voiceover against a backdrop of stunning equine images. "If you don't love horses before you see this film, you definitely will afterwards." Winner presentations were aired June 4 live on MCOE Channel 26.

NOMAD ALERT...Don't miss the three-day Modern Nomad festival at the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, this Friday through Sunday morning. Poetry, workshops, jazz, folk, dance jams, indie films at midnight on the lawn, all kinds of creative energy, plus food and wine. Call 667-2574, or just show up and pay $20 for a day pass.