Published on: Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Bowie Community Theatre

Bowie Playhouse at White Marsh Park

6314 Crain Highway

Bowie

301-809-3078

www.bctheatre.com

“Same Time, Next Year,” Aug. 13-14.

Written in 1975 by Bernard Slade. This play, written in 1975 by Bernard Slade and directed by Linda Kirby, focuses on two people, married to others, who meet for a romantic tryst once a year for two dozen years. New Jersey accountant, George and Oakland, Calif. housewife, Doris meet at a Northern California inn in February 1951. They have an affair, and then agree to meet once a year, despite their marriages and having six children between them.

Over the course of the next 24 years, they develop an emotional intimacy deeper than what one would expect to find between two people meeting for a clandestine relationship just once a year. During the time they spend with each other, they discuss the births, deaths, and marital problems each is experiencing at home, while they adapt themselves to the social changes affecting their lives. Aug. 13 and 14 at 8 p.m.

Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center

Ina and Jack Kay Theatre

University of Maryland

College Park

301-405-ARTS

www.claricesmithcenter.umd.edu

Liz Lerman Dance Exchange's “The Matter of Origins,” Sept. 10-12.

Act One is a dance performance illuminated by video and a vivid soundscape, exploring the nature of beginnings and the physics that underlies the origin of matter. Act Two will incorporate tea, cake and conversation as Dance Exchange cast members serve tea and chocolate cake made from the famous recipe of Edith Warner, the Los Alamos local whose tea house was a gathering spot for the scientists of the Manhattan Project. This experience will allow audiences to respond to what they have seen and contribute their own insights to the spirit of discovery at the heart of “The Matter of Origins.” Performances: Sept. 10 at 8 p.m. and Sept. 12 at 3 p.m. and tickets are $35. There will be an audience response Sept. 11 at 10 a.m.

The University of Maryland School of Music's Schumann Festival celebrates the 200th anniversary of the German composer's birth with a festival devoted to his work. The festival begins Oct. 19 with a showcase of chamber work's featuring Maryland faculty and the Left Bank Quartet. Other events include tenor Christoph Genz and noted Romantic musicologist/pianst Charles Rosen recreating Schumann's song cycle “Dichterliebe” in a seldom-heard version that includes four unpublished songs on Oct. 20. On Oct. 21, mezzo-soprano Delores Ziegler and accompanist Rita Sloan will culminate in a performance of “Paradise and the Peri,” a cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra that was Schumann's most popular and most frequently performed work during his lifetime. Supplanted by other work over the years, it is rarely performed but will resurface Oct. 22 as the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra and the University of Maryland Concert Choir bring it to the stage.

Greenbelt Arts Center

123 Centerway

 Greenbelt

301-441-8770

www.greenbeltartscenter.org

 “Charleston Revisited,” through Aug. 14.

Guest Performance written and directed by Anthony Gallo. Produced by the 7th Street Playhouse

Indomitable Charleston matron, Charlotte Butler, is visited by her neighbor's new beau. The two make a nighttime trip to a cemetery, which leads to an unanticipated encounter. This mystery-comedy, set in Charleston's Historic district, is filled with eccentric characters and old-world gracious living.

“King Lear,” Aug. 20 - Sept.  4. From The Rude Mechanicals.

ALONIZ Improv Team (Eleanor Roosevelt High School) - Sept. 5 and 6

 Announcing our 31st season:

Note: Show dates subject to change

Sep 24 - Oct 16: “Volpone,” by Ben Jonson, directed by Bill Jones.

Nov 12 - December 4: “Chapter Two,” by Neil Simon, directed by Sheilah Crossley-Cox (AUDITIONS: Aug 23 - 24 Callbacks: Aug 26).

Jan 21 - Feb 12: “Doubt,” by John Patrick Shanley, directed by Bob Kleinberg.

Mar 11 - Apr 2: “Reefer Madness,” book by Kevin Murphy & Dan Studney, Music by Dan Studney, Lyrics by Kevin Murphy, directed by Jeffery Lesniak.

Apr 22 - May 13: “The Burial” at Thebes, by Seamus Heaney, directed by Patrick Miller.

Indian Head Center for the Arts

The Black Box Theatre

4185 Indian Head Highway

Indian Head

301-743-3040

www.indianheadblackbox.org

The Indian Head Center for the Arts invites the public to the culminating performance of its Youth Theatre Camp 2010. The performance of selected monologues from Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters will take place in the Black Box Theatre at 4185 Indian Head Highway, Indian Head, August 14th at 8 p.m.  Admission is $5 per person at the door, or reserve in advance by email to info.ihca@gmail.com. 

Laurel Mill Playhouse

508 Main St.

 Laurel

301-452-2557

www.laurelmillplayhouse.org

“Disco Inferno,” through Aug. 22.

A spellbinding story that captivates audiences, making them laugh and cry. It's packed with over 30 classic seventies floor fillers and is a musical celebration of the perpetual spirit of the decade that brought us flared trousers, platform shoes and more glitter than can be found in Liberace's wardrobe. A hilarious script, fantastic characters and an electrifying score, combine to create a high energy musical guaranteed to warm hearts, get feet tapping and audiences leaving the auditorium with a daft grin of pleasure and the fondest memories of a sensational era. Songs from the 1970s including some performed or written by Air supply, David Bowie, Donna Summer, Earth Wind and Fire, Elton John, Gloria Gaynor, K.C. and the Sunshine Band and the Trammps.

Performances run weekends through Aug. 22 with Friday and Saturday evening performances at 8 p.m. Tickets are $13 for general admission. Admission for students (18 and under) and seniors (65 and over) is $10. For reservations, call 301-617-9906 and press 2.

“The American Way,” a play being produced in partnership with Montpelier Mansion and the Laurel Museum. The play, which runs Oct. 1 through Oct. 22nd, is part of a project called Barriers and Gateways: The Immigrant Experience, which in turn is part of a larger project with the Smithsonian Institution called Between Fences. Montpelier Mansion is the first stop in the Maryland tour of Between Fences, an exhibit about boundaries in our everyday lives. Each host site for Between Fences must create a companion exhibit and programming on the topic of boundaries in their own communities. Montpelier has chosen to do their companion exhibit and programming on the metaphorical boundaries faced by immigrants throughout history. This is where the Laurel Mill Playhouse comes in. They have decided to do The American Way as part of the programming for Barriers and Gateways. The American Way, by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, directed by Marie Sproul and Produced by Maureen Rogers, explores the challenges faced by a family of German immigrants in the early 1900s.

If you have any questions, please contact Holly Burnham at Montpelier Mansion, 301-377-7817, holly.burnham@pgparks.com, or Maureen Rogers at Laurel Mill Playhouse, at 301-452-2557, maureenrogers@gmail.com.  Thank you very much.

Montpelier Arts Center

9652 Muirkirk Road

Laurel

301-377-7800, 410-792-0664;

­TTY 301-490-2329

http://www.pgparks.com/Things_To_Do/Arts/Montpelier_Arts_Center.htm

“Arsenic and Old Lace,” Aug. 27 - Sept. 12.

A farcical black comedy set in Brooklyn, New York during the 1940s. The play revolves around two nice, sweet old ladies who murder nice, sweet, lonely old men by offering them elderberry wine laced with poison. The Brewster sisters live with their mentally challenged nephew Teddy who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt and frequently charges up the stairs as if it were San Juan Hill. Matters get complicated when a second nephew Mortimer, a theater hating drama critic discovers the murders.

Mortimer must juggle the antics of his two murdering Aunts, calls from the NYPD regarding Teddy, woo his fiancé Elaine and get rid of his criminal older brother Jonathan who has just arrived in town with the alcoholic plastic surgeon Dr. Einstein. In this adroit mixture of comedy and mayhem, Arsenic and Old Lace satirizes our normal charitable impulses and pokes fun at the conventions of the theater.

Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m.

Admission: $17 for adults; $14 for students/seniors/military.