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2008 NVTA One-Act Festival Schedule Set

NVTA, an organization of community theaters in Northern Virginia, Washington and Maryland, will host member companies in a short play competition June 13 - 21 at the James Lee Community Theatre in Falls Church. There will be an awards ceremony on Sunday evening June 22. Tickets to individual evenings are $10 and a full festival pass for all four evenings plus the reception and awards ceremony is $30. Call (703) 866-6238. Click here to see the full schedule.

Woolly's Playmaking Program Presents Student Works With Professional Actors Tonight

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company presents eight to ten short plays by student participants in its PLAYMAKING program that has involved young people in an educational outreach effort for the past eleven years. This spring's installment involves students in The SEED School, a public charter school in Anacostia and Metro TeenAIDS who have worked with playwright/teacher Patrick Crowley to develop their plays. Jennifer Nelson directs Kofi Owusu, Fatima Quander, Kenyatta Rogers, Stephawn Stephens and Dawn Ursula in the performances which will begin at 6:30 this evening in Woolly's Melton Rehearsal Hall. Admission is free but reservations are suggested. Call 202-289-2443 extension 525.

Free Panel on Classical Sanskrit Drama Tonight in Shirlington

Washington Shakespeare Company Artistic Associate Gaurav Gopalan and some of the actors who participated in that company's series of staged readings of classical Sanskrit Drama last year will participate in a panel discussion titled Divine Drama tonight at the Shirlington Library in the same building that houses Signature Theatre at the west end of the Village of Shirlington. The session will be moderated by Dr. Janet M. Powers of Gettysburg College. The discussion begins at 7 pm and admission is free.

Next New Reviews and News On Wednesday, May 28

Potomac Stages is taking a slightly elongated Memorial Day weekend and will resume publishing new reviews and news items on Wednesday, May 28.

Baltimore Playwrights Festival Lineup Set

This summer's festival of new works written by Maryland and Washington DC playwrights will feature eight full length plays, one evening of four short plays under one director and another evening of one-act plays with a selection of directors. The festival runs from June 26 to August 31 in multiple venues throughout Baltimore. The four short plays to be directed by Susan McCarty at the Vagabond will be Trio by Jim Cary, Pier by Joe Dennison, Suckled by Wolves by Pat Montley and Foundation and Mettle by Julie Lewis. The full length works are:

• Finding Fossils by Ty DeMartino

• Jarvis Legend's Burrowed Skin by Julie Lewis

• Nonstop Realism by Tim Paggi

• Keeping Faith by Mark Scharf

• Graven Image by Stephen Kilduff

• Gay Deceivers by P.S. Lorio

• Kosher with Salsa by Miryam Madrigal

• Helena Troy by Rich Espey

For full schedule information, visit www.baltimoreplaywrightsfestival.org.

Library Kicks Off Bill Bojangles Robinson Series Tonight

Tonight at 7 o'clock the Library of Congress begins showing a number of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson films in the Mary Pickford Theater of the Madison Building on Independence Avenue SE. Tonight's film will be the 1935 "The Little Colonel." Tomorrow it will be another 1935 film, "The Littlest Rebel." Both films featured Bojangles with Shirley Temple. Thursday will bring "Stormy Weather" from 1943 and "The Nicholas Brothers: Flying High" from 1999. On Friday night, there will be a live performance in tribute featuring Ayodele Casel, Tappers with Attitude, Dianne Walker and Baakarie Wilder in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library's Jefferson Building. Reservations can be made by calling 202-707-5677 between 9 am and 4 pm.

Three "Phantoms" Perform At Toby's In Tonight's Benefit

Three who have starred in The Phantom of the Opera join in a concert at Toby's Dinner Theatre in Columbia tonight to benefit The Columbia Center for Theatrical Arts. Chris Groenendaal (who was the original Andre on Broadway) has performed the lead role nearly 900 times on Broadway and in Canada. Kevin Gray has played both the Phantom and Raul on Broadway. Craig Schulman is probably better known for his work as Jean ValJean in Les Misérables but has been known to don the famous mask at times. Tickets are $75 and can be reserved by calling 410-381-0700.

TICKETplace Day-Of-Performance Online Discounts Now Begin At Midnight

Expanding the online feature for day-of-performance discount tickets, TICKETplace, a service of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington, now makes each day's offerings available at Midnight rather than the start of business in the morning. Tickets are made available at at a price calculated as half the list price plus a service fee of 17% of face value of the ticket. Thus, for this evening's performances, tickets are available for the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Antony and Cleopatra for $49.92, the African Continuum Theatre Company's Intimate Apparel for $24.79 or MetroStage's The Stephen Schwartz Project for $26.80. (Each of of these shows have been designated a Potomac Stages Pick.) In all, seven theatrical productions are available on line for tonight. In addition, TICKETplace often offers discounted tickets for opera, dance and concerts. Click here to see a full listing of the shows available through TICKETplace, including those that can be purchased in advance at the sales office on 7th Street NW.

Serenity Stages Season of Youth at THEARC

Serenity Players, the only theatre company in Washington east of the Anacostia River, mounts a one-act play about the challenges facing a "smart young black student in an exclusive prep school" this weekend at THEARC on Mississippi Avenue SE. The play, Season of Youth, by Jonathan Saldivar, has been adapted for a film featuring Jesse L. Martin which has yet to be released.

Petosa To Stay At Olney

The Board of Directors of the Olney Theatre Center for the Arts has persuaded Artistic Director Jim Petosa, who had announced his intention to step down at the end of this year, to stay on indefinitely. Petosa has led the theater for fourteen years. Most recently, he has been splitting his time between his duties in Olney and his work as the Director of the School of Theatre at Boston University's College of Fine Arts.

Signature's Spider Woman Repeats As Ushers' Favorite Show

Last month, the Ushers who volunteer at theaters throughout the Potomac Region and who participate in Potomac Stages' Ushers Favorite Show Award program named Signature Theatre's atmospheric production of the Kander and Ebb musical version of the novel by Manuel Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman, with a book by Terrence McNally, as one of two shows that were their favorites among all the shows they saw during March. This month, they repeat the choice but this time as an unshared honor. It is only the eighth time that a show has been selected two months in a row since the ushers began making the award four years ago. Three of those earlier double-wins were Signature Theatre musicals (Assassins, Urinetown and The Witches of Eastwick) while three were productions at Studio Theatre (My Children! My Africa!, Take Me Out and The Syringa Tree). The Arena Stage production of 33 Variations also earned the honor two months in a row. Kiss of the Spider Woman was the first of three productions of Signature's Kander and Ebb Celebration. The second, The Happy Time, is currently playing and the third, The Visit starring Chita Rivera and George Hearn, begins previews this evening.

A Choice Of Theater-Related Events Tonight in Washington

There are two free theatre related events to take your choice between tonight in Washington. The Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center offers a 6 o'clock performance by the students of the University of Maryland's Musical Theater Program made up of songs and scenes from Broadway, past and present. No tickets are required and the event will be simulcast on the Center's internet site. Also free, but requiring a reservation, is a 7 o'clock performance at the National Portrait Gallery titled Hepburn Herself in which Helen Hedman will portray Katherine Hepburn responding to questions put by Jewell Robinson. The script was compiled from quotes from Hepburn's long career. Reservations can be made by calling 202-633-8520.

Firebelly's Gollwitzer And Walthall And Photographer Gniewek To Be Honored

This year's recipients of the Arlington Branch of the American Association of University Women's Elizabeth Campbell Award for the  Advancement of the Arts will be the Artistic Director and Producer of Firebelly Productions, Kathy Gollwitzer and Barbara Walthall. Firebelly, which they formed in 2002 to provide training and performance opportunities for young adult performers, puts on its shows in Arlington's Theatre On The Run. Three of the twelve productions of the company that Potomac Stages has reviewed have been designated Potomac Stages Picks: Proof, Butterflies Are Free and Of Mice And Men. The recipient of this year's award for Notable Achievement in the Arts goes to Ray Gniewek who has been the production photographer for innumerable shows in the Arlington theater community. The citation will point out that he refuses compensation for his photographic services, which makes his contribution to the arts in Arlington all the more noteworthy. The awards will be presented at a luncheon to be held at the Army-Navy Country Club on May 17.

Bulletin: Two Performances of Anima Cancelled

Doorway Arts Ensemble has announced the cancellation of tonight's performance of Anima at Flashpoint as well as of the matinee previously scheduled for Sunday, May 11. No reason for the cancellation was provided.

Glory Days Closes On Broadway

The official opening night at the Circle on the Square Theatre in New York of the four-person, one-act coming of age musical that received its world premiere at Signature Theatre this January, Glory Days, turned out to be its official closing night as well. In an exceedingly rare event, the Signature Theatre production transferred essentially unchanged to Broadway with the same cast (Steven Booth, Andrew C. Call, Adam Halpin and Jesse JP Johnson) and the same set, costume and lighting design under the same director, Eric Schaeffer. The morning-after reviews ranged from dismissively negative to charitable, and the show took in only $46,848 at the box office for its final week of previews. This is less than 10% of the $486,000 that is the potential take for a week for the show. Click here to read our review.

Glory Days Opens On Broadway

The four-person, one-act coming of age musical that received its world premiere at Signature Theatre this January, Glory Days, had its official Broadway opening last night at the Circle on the Square Theatre in New York, a 623-seat house in the basement of the building that also houses the nearly two thousand seat Gershwin Theatre where mega-hit Wicked is playing. In an exceedingly rare event, the Signature Theatre production transferred essentially unchanged to Broadway with the same cast (Steven Booth, Andrew C. Call, Adam Halpin and Jesse JP Johnson) and the same set, costume and lighting design under the same director, Eric Schaeffer. Few, if any, changes in the text or the songs were made. The morning-after reviews may determine the financial success of the effort. Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post gave very much praise and the New York Post and Variety reviews are very negative. Click here to read our review.

Theater J Cancels Previews for Tonight Through Thursday

As Theater J prepares for the world premiere of David in Shadow and Light, a musical based on the life of the biblical King David, technical challenges have required more time than originally scheduled and, so, the theater has delayed the beginning of previews from tonight until this Saturday. The first preview will now be Saturday evening and there will be two previews on Sunday, at 3 and 8 o'clock. The 8 o'clock preview on Sunday will be "pay what you can," while admission to the other two previews of the weekend, and those leading up to the May 18 opening, will cost $25 a seat.

Bethesda Theatre To Re-Open With Jewtopia Show

After shutting down operations due to water damage from a plumbing leak and canceling the remaining run of Smokey Joe's Café three weekends ago, the Bethesda Theatre has announced it will resume presentations with the area premiere of World of Jewtopia by Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson, creators of the show Jewtopia and authors of Jewtopia: The Chosen Book for the Chosen People. The show will run June 5 through 22.

Biblical Black Comedy Gets Free Premiere Reading This Sunday

The Last Days of King Solomon, a comedy by Anthony E. Gallo (Margherita, Vandergrift!) will be given its premiere in a staged reading directed by Darryl Winston at the Universalist National Memorial Church at 16th and S Streets NW this Sunday at 3 pm. Described as "a black comedy with music about doubt and faith during the later days of Solomon" the play will feature Cora Alter, Jim Epstein, Anita Jones, Leon Levenson, Steve Leventhal and Thavma Phillips. For reservations, call 202-544-6973.

Synetic Offers A Free Peek At Carmen Tonight in Rosslyn

The next offering of Synetic Theatre will be Paata Tsikurishvili and Nathan Weinberger's adaptation of Prosper Mérimée’s novela Carmen, which was also the basis of Bizet's opera. Tonight at 6 o'clock, Synetic will offer a "behind-the-scenes look at a rehearsal" of Carmen at the Rosslyn Spectrum. While there is no admission charge, reservations are required. Call 703-522-6628.