The theater season is in full swing this week with two dozen Equity, non-Equity and community theaters raising their curtains. (So to speak.)

That means hundreds – and hundreds – of people helping to make it happen.

For instance –

Yup, “The Lion King” is a touring show, but it employees 43 locals – seven musicians, 18 stagehands, 16 wardrobe and two hair/wigs. And that doesn’t even count ushers and box office.

More than 50 people are involved in “After Ashley” at Know Theatre and a block away, 25 actors, techies and support staff are putting on “The Goat.” Tech director and sound designer Luke Brockmeier is loving the new space. “There’s no better example than this production to watch a space (formerly Jekyll & Hyde’s at Twelfth and Main) metatmorphose into whatever we want it to be.”

No surprise, it takes a small army to keep Playhouse shows running at the Marx and Shelterhouse. Counting full- and part-time staff (adminiitrative and production), box office and house staff, acting and stage management interns and, oh, yeah, actors – 142. Add the weekend’s 297 ushers and that’s a lot of warm bodies. (The number of ushers signed on for the run of “Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure” is 1,080. I didn’t believe it, either, but it’s 30 ushers for every performance.)

“The Tempest” adds up to 32 for Cincinnati Shakespeare, it’s 18 aboard Showboat Majestic for “Plaza Suite” and another 25 for Falcon Theatre, with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Monmouth Theater in Newport. Queen City’s Lyle Benjamin also says 25 for the Mamet double-bill revving up at Cincinnati Performance Warehouse in Northside, with “Oleanna” opening and “Cryptogram” in rehearsal.

With more than a dozen community theaters in business in early May, add several more hundred for shows including Footlighters’ “Parade” and Drama Workshop’s “Defying Gravity.”

All this made me check in with Northern Kentucky University, where the “Y.E.S.” Fest had three plays running in repertory last month. “All tallied, from playwrights to directors to master electricians to box office staff, it took the effort of about 155 people,” approximates NKU’s Josh Neumeyer.

“The great thing about doing theater in an educational setting, especially new work like the Y.E.S. Festival, is watching the students learn from experiences they have both onstage and off.”

It takes a village to make a theater scene.

Jackie Demaline

 

Bravo to downtown advocate Mary Armor for coming up with the idea of a twice yearly Downtown Hop-Around and then having the gumption (and the organizational skills of a computer program and the strategic overview of a field marshal) to see it through.

Last night’s Hop added entertainment to the mix, and what a pleasure it was to see Northern Kentucky University’s musical theater troupe on stage in the courtyard at Arnold’s Bar & Grill. I was there for a bit of “Carousel” and “Spelling Bee,” a set from “Into the Woods” and a rendition of “Chicago” that shut up every guy in the chatty room.

It was a great showcase for student talent and a swell job by Jamey Strawn at the keyboard, who played a three-hour set.

Also had a chance to stick my head in an Universal Grille where League of Cincinnat Theatres prez Jim Stump was pressing flesh and urging diners to become audiences. Our top-hatted Vice Jim Tarbell started the evening at Sully’s, where he promised a public meeting of the city’s Arts, Culture, Tourism and Other Stuff of an entertaining nature in mid-May. The room was so merry it was impossible to hear anything else – except for Gary Sandy’s theme song (“WKRP in Cincinnati.”) It must be very cool to have your own theme song.

New Stage Collective used the event to throw open its doors for a sneak peek at its new digs at Twelfth and Main and it’s very much in the spirit of its near-neighbor Know Theatre. An upstairs loft space (as opposed to Know’s upstairs black box) and the chairs are a colorful, well-padded mix of traditional and café chairs. Very fun, although I have to get used to theaters with no arm rests.

Let’s stand back and be blissed out that in just a year two very cool theater spaces have opened within a block of each other off Twelfth (Know Theatre opened on Jackson just about a year ago.) And let’s be further blissed that these theater companies with a downtown spirit are also finding plays to match.

Know opened dark media satire “After Ashley” this weekend – and while the subject hasn’t been out of fashion since its Humana Fest debut a couple of years back, the feeding frenzy over the Virginia Tech massacre carries special resonance this week.

Thursday, New Stage takes a bold leap with the regional premiere of Edward Albee contemporary masterpiece “The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?” with a kick-ass cast led by Amy Warner and Brian Isaac Phillips.

I would be remiss not to mention that another block west, at Twelfth and Vine, Ensemble opens the regional premiere of Off-Broadway hit “Souvenir,” directed by the gifted Michael Haney, this week. It looks like another gotta-see.

Truth be told, at 8 o’clock on a glorious Saturday evening, Main Street’s only foot traffic were smatterings of locals, but that’s going to change in a big way in the next couple of months with many plans for high-end eateries and drinkeries in play within range of Twelfth.

Then, says New Stage artistic director Alan Patrick Kenny, the hopping will extend to uptown all weekend every weekend, with much hopping, stopping in and popping on pre- and post-show.

To go back to my point of six paragraphs above – we’ve longed for this scene for years, and that means we have to support it, hanging in through potentially rocky beginnings.

I hope everyone reads Big Bang in today’s Enquirer. Great, great ideas, but changing a city’s heartbeat is participatory. The small theater scene is happening now. Make the investment of time and cash (in this neighborhood, you’re talking 20 bucks) for the promise of a lively future.

What do YOU say?

Jackie Demaline

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When Ed Trach graduated from Yale University in 1958 he was going to be a playwright and a director. He expected to go straight to work for legendary Broadway showman Mark Hellinger.

But then he got an even more interesting offer, from Procter & Gamble, then in the big business of producing daytime soap operas. Trach was offered a starter position, “supervising producer in training,” he laughs now. “I wanted to learn television,” Trach says, so he figured he’d spend a year on the job.

He stayed for 36 years, starting with “As the World Turns,” then the first 30-minute serial (until then shows were 15 minutes.) It was created by Irna Phillips, credited with pretty much inventing the daytime form, and notoriously difficult. Co-workers warned Trach he’d be there for six months. He was still there 21 years later when she retired.

Working with writers, developing story lines, making sets work, dealing with a couple of dozen actors, “and not spending a lot of money” was so demanding Trach didn’t give a thought to the road not taken, but when he retired after 36 years, with “Guiding Light” and “Another World” also on his resume, Trach started thinking about stage drama – and musicals.

“People told me, “Write what you know.”

Which is what brings us to “Sugar ‘n’ Spice,” a musical comedy set in the black and white and live-TV soap opera world of the early 1960s, written and composed by Trach. It gets two free staged readings at 8 p.m. April 28 and 2 p.m. April 29 in CCM Master Classroom 3250 in Mary Emrey Hall of College-Conservatory of Music at University of Cincinnati. It will be performed by musical theater students and directed and music directed by grad students. It’s sponsored in part by a developmental grant from Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative.

“Sugar ‘n’ Spice” is about a talented young innocent who comes to New York to try her luck on a variety show, somehow ends up as the vixen on a daytime soap and starts behaving like her character. Trach promises dark family secrets, fractured romantic triangles, bizarre back stories and visits to the “True to Life,” the daytime soap opera within the musical soap opera.

It’s all happening here because Trach’s two sons ended up in Cincinnati and New Yorker Trach moved to Fort Mitchell a couple of years ago ”to be near the granchildren.”

Over the last few years, Trach has written a musical adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” and a chamber opera based on the two-person play “Love Letters.” A play, “Diamonds,” will get a reading from Cincinnati Playwrights on June 26 in the Aronoff’s Fifth Third Theater as part of CPI’s “New Voices” series. It was originally scheduled for February but the reading was cancelled due to ice.

These days Trach is outlining a holiday musical based on Currier and Ives prints, inventing storylines for the lithographs to come to life.

 

Remember cute little Noah Galvin, who won our hearts as star of “Ace” at Playhouse last fall? On the heels of his Kevin Kline Award in St. Louis (for his “Ace” performance), Noah is announced as the lead in the new Cirque du Soleil show which debuts for the 2007 holidays at Madison Square Garden.

It’s hard to figure out if there’s a title from the Cirque Web site – “A Winter Tale in New York,” which is the headline, sounds a little mundane for the troupe. Anyway, Noah plays a boy who is living in a city with a cold winter but no snow – so he goes looking for some. It starts previews Nov. 1.

In other casting news, when the curtain comes down on “The Producers” for the last time next weekend, Northern Kentucky native son Lee Roy Reams, who’s been playing the “keep it gay” director Roger DeBris, will simply pack up DeBris’ Chrysler Building-esque haute couture and Hitler storm trooper rig and head for Vegas, where he takes over the role on May 7. And a tip of the fedora to Cincinnati-based producer Rick Steiner for a great Broadway run.

Cincinnati born playwright Theresa Rebeck’s “Mauritius” is nominated for four Elliott Norton Awards in Boston, including outstanding production, for its world premiere at the Huntongton Theatre Company. Awards are announced May 21. (Same night as our Acclaim Awards at The Carnegie!) The Independent Reviewers of New England has already selected “Mauritius” Best New Play.

Playbill Online speculates that Rebeck has “two potential contenders” for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, being announced tomorrow, “Mauritius” and Humana Festival hit “The Scene” which had a sell-out Off-Broadway production in January.  

Also from Playbill Online, who knows, perhaps there’s another John Doyle re-consideration of Stephen Sondheim in the future. “Company,” of course, started at Playhouse in the Park – and keep your fingers crossed for New York stage award nominations, which begin April 23 with the Outer Critics Circle followed by Drama Desk noms on April 26. 

Doyle’s NY critical darling “Sweeney Todd” is part of the Broadway/Across/America-Cincinnati touring season in 2007-2008 and now he’s in talks to re-mount “Merrily We Roll Along,” which moves backwards through time over a quarter century to see how best friends became virtual strangers. It unfairly died on Broadway in 1981 in about a blink.

Closer to home, word is cast members of  “Disney’s The Lion King” will do some gender-bending for a good cause on April 30.

In the spirit of sexual, racial and age diversity, “Broadway Deconstructed” will cross boundaries to explore Broadway show tunes in unexpected ways at 8 p.m. at Playhouse in the Park.

“Deconstructed” benefits the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Cincinnati. Tickets $25 adults, $20 students, e-mail www.glbtcentercincinnati.com for an invite. Valid IDs will be required for admission.

Jackie Demaline

 

Did anybody else catch UC prez Nancy Zimpher hanging out outside the Today Show at the crack of dawn this morning to shout out to Al Roker about the musical theater grads’ showcase? (Although what she said was “Broadway” – and who can blame her for employing the power of positive thinking?) The whole gang were in blinding red, you couldn’t miss them.

That’s all I caught. “Today” has been so fixated on Don Imus for the last few days that I’ve been everywhere but NBC and MSNBC in my channel-hopping. Zimpher and her posse weren’t just passing by, they were standing by for a private tour following the end of the broadcast (and en route to Sotheby’s) part of a big NYC splash to celebrate the “Not Famous Yet” showcase and no doubt position the big capital campaign on the horizon.

Word is starting to filter in on the showcse outcome (the two performances were yesterday) and while this is strictly anecdotal, it sounds like 2007 Acclaim Rising Star Sean Montgomery landed more than a dozen invites to meet with casting agents and such.

Jackie Demaline

 

This is a CCM edition of Buzzz, in honor of the 2007 graduating classes in musical theater and drama at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Fifteen musical theater grads are packing up and moving on to New York after preview performances of the annual "Not Famous Yet" Showcase that wrapped Saturday night. An audience of theater industry reps will see the performance on Thursday at Manhattan’s West Side Theatre.

Here’s news to watch for: ASHLEY BROWN (Class of 2004), currently starring as “Mary Poppins” on Broadway, was invited to meet with friends of musical theater who are trailing the kids to New York for a weekend of partying, including a Rainbow Room showcase reprise on Friday.

The idea was for Brown to meet with a group after a performance but that was nixed by Disney, reportedly because the timing coincides with A GREAT BIG ANNOUNCEMENT, but they weren’t saying what. Just that Brown has to be there. 

CONGRATS to CCM grad LESLIE KRITZER who gets a Special Achievement MAC Award for her extended and extended again engagement of “Leslie Kritzer Is Patti LuPone at Les Mouches” which was THE buzz cabaret act last autumn into winter. Hopefully Kritzer will get a night off from “Legally Blonde” when the MACs (The Manhattan Association of Cabarets & Clubs) are presented May 1.

Cincinnati native LISA ASHER is nominated in the Female Vocalist category. Going to be in NYC? Call for ticket info at 212-307-7171 or visit www.ticketmaster.com.

GOOD NEWS/BAD NEWS? -- The good news is that KIRSTEN WYATT lost no time finding work on Broadway after movie-into-musical "High Fidelity" tanked (she has a nice featured role) after just a few weeks and right before Christmas. Hopefully it won't be bad news, but Wyatt will be Frenchie in the TV reality show-into-musical revival "Grease." Will it be "the one that we want?" At least there's a healthy box office advance off interest from viewers.

On to drama: The 2007 class is headed for Los Angeles at the end of April, and everybody's hoping they can match the career of 1995 grad Diana Maria Riva (Uhlenbrock). Riva has been a regular on several series and has had a recurring role on NBC's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." Now she has a costarring role in Lifetime Television's "Side Order of Life" debuting in July.

Riva plays the brash, outspoken best friend whose cancer diagnosis changes the life of the central character. "Side Order" has good pedigree, according to drama department chief Richard Hess: a producer of "American Beauty," the writer of HBO's Emmy-winning "Warm Springs" and a director of "Ally McBeal." Filming begins in May. 

TIMON TESTIMONIAL comes from Damien Baldet, who sings the praises not just of "The Lion King" (where he's wrapping up a run as Timon) but of CCM Drama every chance he gets. After his dad laid down the law and said there would be a university degree, "I went home to University of Cincinnati and auditioned for CCM on a whim. Admissions were closed, but Michael Burnham was kind enough to accept me. I instantly fell in love with the theater." And became a straight A student.

"The first day I went to the Conservatory, I knew I had found a home. Everyone there was so blisteringly talented and the professors were so articulate I just wanted to know what they knew."

Baldet applauds Diane Kvapil, Terrell Finney and Lucinda Holshue (now moved on) along with Burnham. "I still use what they all taught me every day both personally and professionally,” says Baldet. “I haven't had an experience that transformative since."

-- Jackie Demaline

 

Raul Esparza and cast members of “Company,” which went from Playhouse in the Park to Broadway, perform Thursday morning, April 5, on Fox TV’s “The Morning Show with Mike & Juliet” which auirs locally from 9 to 10 a.m.

According to BroadwayWorld.com, Angel Desai, Kelly Jeanne Grant and Elizabeth Stanley will bring their saxophones along for “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” (the saxes were an add by director John Doyle for the Broadway run) and Esparza will sing “Marry Me a Little.”

“Company” is eking along, playing at below 60 percent attendance and fingers are crossed that it makes it to awards season. Nominations start rolling out late this month and Esparza is likely to make every list..

Esparza does have his next job lined up, also according to BroadwayWorld.com. Despite much chatter that he was pegged for Mel Brooks’ musical of “Young Frankenstein,” the online theater news site says he’ll star as punk rock icon and political activist Jello Biafra in the Broadway bound “California Uber Alles: The Dead Kennedys Musical.”

 

 

Now what?

Another Broadway show isn’t necessarily the answer, and neither are Broadway prices.

The Lion King’s greatest strengths are in the way it’s imagined and executed by director Julie Taymor. Check out her films, and even some of her opera work is available on video. Find the PBS series “Behind the Scenes,” which studies creativity. Taymor is featured. And watch for her next film, “Across the Universe,” due to be released in September.

Look for work by similar artists, like Mary Zimmerman (whose “Metamorphoses” blew away Playhouse in the Park audiences a couple of seasons back.) Watch for touring international companies, which aren’t leashed by comercial formulas.

If your youngster was caught up in the dance, know that choreographer Garth Fagin is one of America’s great contemporary dance artists. This is contemporary dance filtered through a Broadway musical, which is becoming more and more common. “Spring Awakening,” Broadway’s top new musical, has legendary Bill T. Jones as choreographer. 

You don’t even have to leave Cincinnati to see great contemporary dance. Check out the Contemporary Dance Theatre series that, like “The Lion King,”  is housed in the Aronoff Center. And Cincinnati Ballet’s final entry this season is “Twyla Tharp, Plus” on May 18-19.

Taymor’s puppets and masks are astonishing – and they’re all based on ancient forms from around the world. Visit the library, visit the video store then find an opportunity for hands-on experience for interested kids.

Cincinnati Area Puppetry Guild celebrates National Day of Puppetry a week early, with an afternoon show on April 21. The show will be strictly family stuff, but there are professional puppeteers who are well versed in puppetry forms from around the world and who’ll be delighted to answer questions and steer a youngster who asks in a more challenging direction.   

 
Paris? Britney? Lindsay? Who can't do better than that?

Here are some stars who are actually worth watching coming up on CinStages in the next few weeks:

Anthony Darnell in "After Ashley" at Know Theatre, starting April 19. Love him. Same with Angel Zachel in the title role. Actually, we're pretty fond of the whole cast, including Chris Guthrie, Liz Holt and Derek Snow. We hear Angel is leaving the stage for another performance arena -- she's been accepted into law school. Everybody wants to make a living.

The week after that, New Stage Collective has snagged Amy Warner and Cincinnati Shakespeare's Brian Isaac Phillips for its Main Street debut. Watch Warner sink her teeth into the role of an unstrung wife. Move over, Medea. And that elementary Dr. Watson in Playhouse's "Sherlock Holmes" is Cincinnati homeboy Howard Kaye, whose first appearance there was in "Oliver" in 1977.

Shakespeare isn't slouching with the extraordinary Bruce Cromer as Prospero in "The Tempest" opening May 3. If this man is on a stage, buy the ticket.

 
Michael Hollinger’s Opus, wrapping up a (multiple Acclaim-winning) run at Ensemble Theatre today, was the runner-up in the American Theatre Critics Association's Steinberg/ACTA New Play Award. (final 2 p.m. matinee, 513-421-3555)

The winner was Hunter Gatherers by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb. Cincinnati native and proud Ursuline Academy grad Theresa Rebeck's The Scene was a finalist.

 
Fingers crossed for the success of Playhouse in the Park/Children's Theatre proposal for Fifth and Race.

The big loss of course will be the magical park setting and the nighttime vista of downtown. Some Mount Adams residents are already worried about neighborhood restaurants boarding up the windows, and the theater consultants aren't even here yet (that's next week, April 10) to get input from other users and potential friends at City Hall and 3CDC.

Results of the feasibility study is weeks away, the capital campaign isn’t in place, no developers or architects are yet being invited to submit plans – but just imagine.

The big gain would be being downtown. Already a line of condo developments are announced along both sides of the Ohio River. Imagine if Cincinnati nights became lively. Imagine the west end of Fourth Street coming back to life. Imagine Race Street coming to life. Imagine a big city style bar high atop the building and open after performances. That would be quite a view, too.

Imagine what could happen if downtown gets the mid-sized 1,200- to 1,400-seat theater we've been longing for for more than a decade.

The possibility seemed so dead that it's been years since I've pointed north to Columbus and south to Louisville and to the wide range of entertainment choices on offer in both cities -- cabaret, touring classical stars, international performing artists, that bypass Cincinnati because there’s nowhere to play.I’ll take a visiting company every now and again, between Children's Theatre productions and chamber work by Cincinnati Opera and Cincinnati Ballet.

Imagine that's just the beginning. Things could get really interesting if money at long last comes through to renovate and re-open the Emery, giving downtown another 1,200- to 1,400 seat theater. It might not be completely far-fetched -- $$$ could start trickling in if the building's housing goes condo (hey, we're imagining, okay?) and, most significantly, Twelfth Street is starting to cook as an arts corridor.

Where once the Emery stood alone and empty on Walnut, where the nights were dark and the foot traffic was non-existent, now every block has an arts presence on or off the avenue: Music Hall and Memorial Hall on Elm, the planned School for Creative and Performing Arts at Race, Ensemble Theatre at Vine, Know Theatre at Jackson, and New Stage Collective at Main. It might be time to sieze the day (or the night).

As for the theater complex on the hill, let's imagine some more. Cincinnati Shakespeare Company is making no secret that it's shopping for real estate, and the Marx Theatre does its best service to classical work. What do you think – Shakespeare in the Park?