By Rick Pender

Last weekend, 13 community theaters presented a series of 30-minute excerpts at Parrish Auditorium on Miami University's Hamilton campus. There was a big crowd, both on Friday evening (with only four excerpts, the auditorium was nearly full) and again throughout the day on Saturday. Over 500 people registered for the SOUTHWEST OHIO COMMUNITY THEATRE (OCTA) REGIONAL, staged by ACT Cincinnati, the umbrella organization for volunteer theater groups in this region. In addition to sharing excellent productions with other theaters, the purpose of the event is to select several excerpts to go on to a statewide competition at the end of the summer. Four shows and an alternate were selected: Cincinnati Music Theatre's (CMT) Evita, The Drama Workshop's Pride's Crossing, Village Players' Beau Jest and Footlighters' Weird Romance (Stagecrafters' Chapter Two will fill in if one of the other four can't go). CMT's Evita provided the local version of The Producers' sweep in this year's Tony Awards, winning seven "outstandings" from the three adjudicators, judges from other parts of Ohio who rate the performances and offer critiques for all who care to listen. Husband-and-wife team, ED COHEN and DEE ANN BRYLL, co-directed that musical (reviewed by Tom McElfresh last November, "Stronglady," issue of Nov. 16-22, 2000). In a rather unprecedented feat, Cohen was also the director for Pride's Crossing (see my story "Cohen's Crossing," "Cohen's Crossing"). A Cincinnati attorney, Cohen's next theater task is directing Neil Simon's Rumors for The Village Players (Oct. 10-20); he says he needs a comedy to lighten things up. He's already planning for an ambitious independent production a year from now of Israel Horovitz's fascinating Holocaust-related play, Lebensraum, at the Aronoff's Fifth Third Bank Theater. Also recognized for their devotion at a banquet Saturday evening were two community theater veterans, RILLA FOSTER and BOB FRITSCH. ... David Auburn's PROOF kind of got lost in the midst of the Tony Awards avalanche caused by The Producers, but the Pulitzer Prize winner was recognized with the 2000 Best Play Tony. The show's national tour has been announced, beginning in San Francisco in November. The tale of a math prodigy who's been hiding her light under a bushel will crisscross America, but no stops are planned nearby -- Chicago, Detroit and Pittsburgh are as close as it comes to Cincinnati. THE BROADWAY SERIES here in Cincinnati has decided that musicals are what audiences want, so they don't present much else. Last time a straight play came to town was Terrence McNally's Master Class in Sept. 1997. We never saw the national tour of one of the greatest theatrical works of the 1990s, Tony Kushner's Angels in America. The problem is that dramas get lost in the Aronoff's big hall, and the Jarson-Kaplan is really too small for most touring productions. If only the Emery were back in business in Over-the-Rhine. ... The Aronoff's Jarson-Kaplan will be the site for a small touring production in July when TV star Bea Arthur (Maude, Golden Girls) presents her one-woman show, And Then There's Bea. Cincinnati is stop No. 5 on a 21-city schedule. Tickets: 513-241-7469. ... Once upon a time MELANIE MARNICH wrote ad copy for Sive/Y&R;, a Cincinnati ad agency. She attended a local community theater production and got bitten by the writing bug, big time. One of her scripts, QUAKE, was a strong presence in the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville earlier this year, and now her show, BLUR, has been produced by the prestigious Manhattan Theatre Club in New York, where just closed on June 24. With this kind of exposure, lots of people will be saying "I knew her when ... ." ... The Denver Center Theatre Company recently produced a much-praised rendition of Michael Genet's Pork Pie -- A Mythical Jazz Fable. Playing The Champion in the tale about a Jazz "cutting" competition is ALTON FITZGERALD WHITE, a graduate of the School for Creative and Performing Arts who studied musical theater at UC's CCM. White has already done the Broadway thing, including playing Coalhouse Walker in Ragtime, so the buzz this show is generating could lead him right back to another high-profile gig in New York.

E-mail Rick Pender

Symphony Is Jammin' (June 21, 2001)
Up and Running (June 21, 2001)
Reason to Believe (June 14, 2001)
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