Home of the FREE weekly email Update

The last of the Potomac Region's professional theaters to announce their full season for 2006-07 is the Washington Stage Guild, which will present four productions at their current home at 14th and T Streets NW between October and May. Three full length plays and one evening of short pieces by the company's specialty, George Bernard Shaw, make up the season. The three full length productions are J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls, Gregory Murphy's The Countess and a new production of Michael Hollinger's fascinating one-act play, Opus, which is currently enjoying its Baltimore premiere in a Potomac Stages Pick production at Everyman Theatre. 

The latest musical with book, music and lyrics by Joan Cushing who wrote Junie B. Jones & A Little Monkey Business and Miss Nelson Has a Field Day  will be given a free staged reading at Round House Theatre in Bethesda on Tuesday at 7 p.m. It is based on a book by Elvira Woodruff titled The Christmas Doll which was set in London in the 1840s. (NOTE: The location has been changed to the Round House Silver Spring Facility.)

The delay in developing the property north of Crystal City has resulted in at least a temporary reprieve for the Clark Street Playhouse and its resident Washington Shakespeare Company. The building, a converted warehouse, is owned by the County of Arlington's Cultural Affairs Division, and had been on a year-to-year lease to the Company who put on their own season of shows as well as hosting other theater companies in the space. More recently, they had been proceeding on a month-to-month basis, not an easy thing to do when producing theater and trying to sell a season subscription. However, the land was to be developed and the theater would have to vacate the premises. That development process has hit a snag and the company has now been informed that they will not have to vacate at least for another year. Thus, the 2006-2007 season will proceed in the Clark Street Playhouse and additional events, including a reading series, will be added.

A survey of top nonprofit organizations by the Chronicle of Philanthropy found that Michael Kaiser's $1, 029,691 in total compensation as President of the Kennedy Center was the most of any of chief executive of the foundations and charities they studied. Kaiser's compensation during 2005 was a big jump from the prior year in part because a bonus earned in 2004 was paid in 2005 along with a 2005 bonus. The receipt of two bonuses in one year resulted in the year's total compensation jumping by a third from the $773,022 he received in 2004. Kaiser's just over one million dollars was nearly seven percent above the next highest compensation in the survey, that of Barry Munitz who headed the J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles until his resignation earlier this year. The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported that the percentage of the income of the organizations headed by the executives in their survey that goes to the salaries of the top executives has stayed relatively stable over the past five years at a fraction of one percent, but that the amount of income of the organizations has been reflected in a similar rise in the level of compensation. Kaiser was the Executive Director of the Royal Opera House in London before assuming the leadership of the Kennedy Center, and was the Executive Director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre Foundation before that. He holds a masters degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, and received his bachelors in economics from Brandies University Magna Cum Laude.

The night before the opening of the revival of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's comedy, State of the Union, there will be a panel discussion of the state of power politics in the nation's capital which will be free to the public at Ford's Theatre. Starting at 7 o'clock this evening, the host of Face the Nation, CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer will moderate the panel which will include include veteran White House correspondent, Helen Thomas. Admission is free and reservations can be made by calling 202-347-6262.

The new President of the League of Washington Theatres is Kevin Moore, Managing Director of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Moore replaces Jennifer L. Nelson, Artistic Director of the African Continuum Theatre Company. The League is approaching its twenty fifth anniversary as an association of the nonprofit professional theaters in Washington and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Currently, there are over forty producing theater companies or venues in the League as well as seven affiliated organizations such as the Actors' Center, the Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington and the Helen Hayes Awards organization.

The Nationwide "Free Night of Theater," a program of the Theatre Communications Group, began as a pilot program in three cities last year. Under the program, theaters offer free tickets to people who reserve them through the website of a central organization in a city. This year the Potomac Region will be part of the program with the League of Washington Theatres acting as the sponsoring organization. People will be able to reserve up to two free tickets by logging onto the league's website at www.lowt.org beginning at noon on Sunday, October 1. In most instances, the "Free Night" this year will be October 19. (Some shows may offer a different night due to schedule conflicts.) Twenty-three theater companies in the region are participating in the program and will be offering more than 1,800 tickets through the program. That is a total of $67,000 in free tickets. The program was conceived as a way to attract new audiences to live theater and theatergoers are encouraged to use the program to visit a theater they have never before attended or to take a friend who has never attended live theater before. A survey of last year's participants by Shugoll Research of Bethesda found that over a third purchased tickets after their free experience.

Actress and songstress,Judy Simmons, and the Smithsonian Institution's cultural historian, Dwight Blocker Bowers, are slated to examine the relative merits of the show music of Stephen Sondheim and Jerry Herman in a Smithsonian Resident Associates program tonight in the S. Dillon Ripley Center on the Mall. There will be live performance and video clips in a program featuring some of the stories behind the careers of these two legendary composer/lyricists. Admission is $20 and reservations may be made by calling 202-357-3030.

The culmination of the summer of events celebrating the creativity of Muppets creator Jim Henson will be this Friday's performance of a live-actor / life-size puppets performance by Blair Thomas & Company at the Clarice Smith Center at the University of Maryland's College Park campus. The performance of The Ox-herder's Tale tops a day that will include the exhibition in the library of material from Henson's career and from the newly digitized collection of Henson's work, and a conversation with his widow, Jane. The exhibition and conversation are free. Admission to The Ox-herder's Tale is $30.

The first class meets tomorrow in a seven-session program to be led by Charter Theatre's Richard Washer titled "How To Watch A Play." The participants will attend four classroom sessions and three performances of plays - Journeymen Theater Ensemble's Spinning into Butter, Charter's Short Order Stories and Quotidian Theatre Company's Tomorrow. The four class sessions will meet at The Writer's Center, 4508 Walsh Street in Bethesda on Tuesday evenings, September 19, October 3 and 17 and November 21. The cost of the workshop of $275 includes admission to the three shows. To register, log on to www.writer.org.

A national effort to bring playwright Suzan-Lori Parks' concept of a year-long theatrical collaboration to fruition will include a Washington area-wide project with participation from any and all interested producing organizations in the region. Over the past four years, Parks has been writing short plays so that there would be one for each day of the year. Between November 13, 2006 and November 12, 2007 there will be productions of these plays around the country in an effort to involve over 600 theaters in major cities in what is hoped to be the largest theatre collaboration in U. S. history. For the local effort, Studio Theatre is taking the lead in soliciting participation on behalf of a coalition including the League of Washington Theatres, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Helen Hayes Awards organization and individual theaters including Round House, Signature, the African Continuum Theatre Company and Woolly Mammoth. Applications are being sought from any producing organization in the region which would take on the task of producing one week's worth (seven short plays) which they can present either for free or on a pay-what-you-can basis in any of a number of formats ranging from staged readings to full productions, and as distinct individual pieces or combined into a seven-play piece which would last between 45 minutes and an hour. Applications must be submitted by October 6.

The free tickets to the Library of Congress' October 23 celebration of the work of the late composer/lyricist Jonathan Larson, whose musical Rent has passed the 4,300 performances mark on Broadway and is still going strong, have been released to TicketMaster and are available to the public. TicketMaster charges its normal service charge of $2.75 and additional handling fees for phone or internet orders. The concert will feature Anthony Rapp who played "Mark Cohen" in the original Broadway cast of Rent, as well as Jeremy Kushnier, Michael McElroy,Randy Graff and  Natascia Diaz, all under the musical direction of Rent's original conductor, Tim Weil. The concert will be at 8 pm in the Coolidge Auditorium in the Library's Jefferson Building on Capitol Hill and will be preceded by a presentation on Larson's work by the Library's Mark Horowitz at 6:15 in the Whittall Pavilion.

As subscribers of the free weekly email Potomac Stages Update already know, Potomac Stages will be on hiatus from September 8 to September 14. Check back here on the 14th for the latest in news and reviews of the incredibly vibrant theater community in the Potomac Region.

The theater enthusiasts who usher in the region's theaters and participate in Potomac Stages' Ushers' Favorite Show Award program have named the Theater Alliance production of Phoebe Rusch's lovely two-person play 3/4 of a Mass for St. Vivian their favorite among all the shows they saw in August. The show was also designated a Potomac Stages Pick when we first reviewed it. The run of this play by a 17 year old author has been extended through September 17 at the H Street Playhouse in NE. 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.

The Kennedy Center's Page-To-Stage Festival of new plays offered a full weekend of things to see and enjoy, but we came away with a few observations that we believe are worth thinking about - to wit:

• Why would the Kennedy Center invite the public to a full day of events on a holiday, with twelve separate shows spread over eight hours and not have either of their restaurants open? Add to the problem that Cupa Cupa across F Street was closed for the holiday and it is a good thing they kept the shuttle going so you could whip over to Bertucci's.
• What was the Signature Theatre thinking when they included songs with adult language in a Millennium Stage presentation? These presentations aren't in a theater where a discrete sign can alert parents to the nature of the material, but are, instead, in the main foyer where they draw tourists and casual attendees as well as die-hard fans. We saw several parents take their youngsters by the hand and walk them out of the hall during the selections from Ass Backwards. There were others who didn't, but should any of them have had to?
• How many attendees complained of the indecipherable schedule of events handed out with a map that did not even show the location of the Family Theater where so many good shows were offered? A simple chronological listing and an up to date map would have been a help.
• Ending on a positive note - How great is it that the Potomac Region theater community can offer so much varied material at an event like this? We are lucky to live where so much interesting work is being attempted and where a center like the Kennedy Center throws itself open to show it off. Consider the season well and truly open.

The Kennedy Center's traditional Page to Stage / New Play Festival kicks off the fall season this weekend with samples of the riches to come from dozens of local companies. The three day festival will feature samples from or complete performances of nearly 70 shows by over thirty-five companies from Washington, Maryland, Virginia and even West Virginia. Click here to view the entire schedule.