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Brian Dragonuk, who has operated Onstage News, an email listing of audition opportunities, underwent surgery and has begun a chemotherapy regime to combat leukemia. His newsletter covers theater, television and film auditions and has been of help to actors throughout the Mid-Atlantic region and the Potomac Region in particular. Tonight at 7:30 the Mid-Atlantic Film Community will be hosting a benefit event at The Cinema Lounge, Gardel’s Supper Club at 29 S. Front Street in Baltimore to help raise money for Brian as he will not be able to work during his chemotherapy regime and recuperation. Admission is $10 and a raffle will be held.

Matty Griffiths Leaves Actors Theatre, Lee Mikeska Gardner Becomes Managing Director

Washington’s Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual and Transgender Theater Company, The Actors Theatre of Washington, has announced the departure of their Managing Director, Matty Griffiths, and named Lee Mikeska Gardner as the new Managing Director. At the same time, the company announced that Rick Hammerly will become Associate Artistic Director. Jeffrey Johnson remains the Artistic Director. Gardner was the Executive Producer at the Washington Shakespeare Company and an Artistic Associate at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. She is a well known director with three Helen Hayes Award nominations for outstanding direction, most recently for After Ashley at Woolly. She's also a well known actress in the Potomac Region with multiple Helen Hayes Award nominations, and she received the award for her role in A House in the Country at Charter Theatre. At the Actors Theatre of Washington she directed Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

The African Continuum Theatre Company has announced that its Artistic Director, Jennifer L. Nelson, will step down at the end of the 2006-07 season. Nelson was the force behind converting a service organization dedicated to advancing African-American theater in the nation's capital, the African Continuum Theatre Coalition, into a full fledged production company - a company that has finally found a permanent home as the professional theater company in residence at the new Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street, NE. The company is now in previews for its first production in the Center's new proscenium house, the Sprenger Theatre. It is Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun which Nelson is directing.

The Young Playwrights' Theater, Karen Zacarías' community outreach program working with DC youth in playwriting programs, launches a series of monthly staged readings of student plays featuring John Lescault and Naomi Jacobson. The series begins tonight at 6 o'clock at Busboys and Poets on 14th Street. Featured in the first evening will be Los Bad Boys vs. DC Boys Crime by Osmin Canales, The Maid by Fatima Figueroa, Trouble Quinceañera by Josie Guevara-Torres and monologues by Oscar Duran and Ana Contreras.

Five Shows Discussed on Just Theater with Potomac Stages' Hathaway

The November edition of Access Montgomery's cable channel 19 television program Just Theater, airs tonight and every Friday night at 9:00 and again on Mondays at 5:30. Potomac Stages' Brad Hathaway and Montgomery Access Theatre Critic Faiga Levine discuss five shows this month. They are: My Fair Lady at Signature Theatre, The Bluest Eye at Theater Alliance, A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Folger, Equus at the Washington Shakespeare Company and the Washing Stage Guild's An Inspector Calls.

The Smithsonian Associates program is sponsoring a celebration of Henrik Ibsen this evening to mark the centennial of his death. Co-sponsored by the Royal Norwegian Embassy, the evening will feature a lecture and readings from Ibsen's plays by actors such as Robert Prosky and Tana Hicken, and Leslie Jacobson, Artistic Director of Horizons Theatre and chair of the George Washington University Department of Theatre and Dance. Admission is $33 and can be arranged by calling 202-357-3030.

The previously announced two week run of the national touring production of the Broadway musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels which was to open next Tuesday at the Hippodrome in Baltimore will now just be one week. The first week has been cancelled in the wake of difficult sales for Thanksgiving week. Instead of opening on the 21st, the show will now open on November 28 and still run only through December 3.

The Washington Shakespeare Company has started another series of Monday night pay-what-you-can staged readings. The company, which presented staged readings of all of Shakespeare's plays and of classic Greek plays, now turns its attention to contemporary British playwrights with the series "Best of the Brits." They kicked it off with Peter Shaffer's Shrivings earlier this week and will have different plays each Monday through December 18. All begin at 8 pm and no reservations are required. Here's the line up for the series:

• November 13 - The Love of the Nightingale by Timberlake Wertenbaker
• November 20 - Night and Day by Tom Stoppard
• November 27 - A night of Harold Pinter
• December 4 - Kafka's Dick by Alan Bennett
• December 11 - Otherwise Engaged by Simon Gray
• December 18 - Bingo by Edward Bond

The new effort of the Keegan Theatre to present smaller, more intimate productions at a somewhat lower price ($15 for students and seniors, $20 general admission) under the joint leadership of Eric Lucas and Kerry Waters Lucas will kick off on November 30 at Theatre II in Arlington's Gunston Arts Center. The New Island Project will present most of its productions in Arlington's Theatre on the Run, but an opening in the schedule at Theatre II has allowed them to kick off with a run of November 30 - to December 23 for their first production, Brian Friel's play Faith Healer. Both Lucases and Mick Tinder will make up the cast of three.

The Kennedy Center has announced the cast for its revival of the charming Bob Merrill/Michael Stewart 1961 musical Carnival! which will be directed by Robert Longbottom who helmed the Center's production of Mr. Roberts in 2005. Ereni Sevasti will take the role of Lili originated by Anna Maria Alberghetti and Jim Stanek will handle the role originated by Jerry Orbach. Natascia Diaz will play the role originated by Kaye Ballard. The show will play the Eisenhower Theater from February 17 to March 11, 2007.

Apparently, October is a very good month for Catalyst Theater. The theater enthusiasts who usher in the region's theaters and participate in Potomac Stages' Ushers' Favorite Show Award program have named Catalyst's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui their favorite among all the shows they saw in October. This is the second time a Catalyst production has been selected, the last being The Elephant Man in October of 2004. Arturo Ui is slated to close after this weekend's performances, all of which are sold out. At the end of the year, the participating Ushers will be asked to chose from among the monthly winners to name a favorite show of the year. To be eligible to participate in the Ushers' Favorite Show Award program, a theater lover must regularly volunteer at live theater events and also regularly see shows at a number of theaters. To sign up to be an Ushers Judge, send an email message to Ushers@PotomacStages.com.

As we reported in September (click here to read the report) Studio Theatre has been marshalling an effort to have local theaters and other cultural organizations in the Potomac Region cooperate in an effort to perform all 365 plays that Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks (Topdog/Underdog) has written for the 365 days that fall between November 13, 2006 and November 12, 2007. She calls it her 365 Days/365 Plays project. The schedule for the year long project here in the region has now been released. Each participating organization will handle the plays for a given week. Some will present a week's worth at a single sitting. Others will space them out over their week. The performances will be at different locations and times and all performances will be free or presented with a request for donations. There will also be simultaneous productions around the country, but the performance schedule for the Potomac Region is as follows:

A new play by Tim Treanor, Dracula, A Love Story, will be given a reading this evening at MetroStage in Alexandria. The cast, headed by Jim Jorgensen in the title role, includes James Beard, Frank Britton, Tina Renay Fulp, Manolo Santalla, Julia Stemper and Cherie Weinert, all under the direction of Bob Bartlett. The reading begins at 7 pm. and admission is free.

Problems with the building at Source Theatre have caused the Actors Theatre of Washington to delay tonight's expected opening of its 11 pm parody, Fatal Attraction - A Greek Tragedy to tomorrow night at 11.

Kensington Arts Theatre Sets 2nd Production of Nevermore

The dark musical Nevermore based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe with a book by Grace Barnes and music by Matt Connor, which had its world premiere last January at Signature Theatre in Virginia, will have its second production next March at the Kensington Arts Theatre in Maryland. Kensington Arts Theatre is a community theater group that has garnered an excellent reputation for productions of musicals, earning a total of fifteen nominations for the Washington Area Theatre Community Honors (WATCH) Awards this year and winning five of them.

Theater J is offering $25 tickets along with wine and snacks after the show for tonight's performance of Robert Brustein's Spring Forward, Fall Back which is a Potomac Stages pick. The "Grapes and Gossip Playdate" features admission to the show and to a wine and cheese post-show reception for a discussion of the play with cast members.

For the sixth year in a row, the Embassy of Canada will send artistic directors from Potomac Region theater companies this summer for an all expense paid visit to the cultural centers of Canada to meet with their counterparts to the north. This year the artistic directors selected are Christopher Henley of the Washington Shakespeare Company and Mark Rhea of Keegan Theatre. Some of the Canadian plays which have been produced here in the Potomac Region as a result of previous contacts made during these visits include Mary's Wedding at the Theater Alliance, The Girl in the Goldfish Bowl at MetroStage and The Drawer Boy at Round House.