There's no need to scoot over. Baltimore's favorite stoop is about to get a lot more wiggle room.
Stoop Storytelling, the series in which local residents tell unscripted anecdotes about their lives, has been a hit since its debut performance in February 2006. After the first season, the show's two creators, scrambling to keep up with the demand for tickets, moved the series to Center Stage, with more than double the seats - and nearly every show still sold out.
Would-be audience members have been known to try to obtain coveted tickets by offering half-joking bribes of chocolate to members of the box office.
This week, the number of performances of the newest show, Baltimoored: Summer in the City , A Live Radio Show, will triple the number of admissions by expanding performances from one to three nights: Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
There also will be a new format. In addition to providing personal vignettes from such storytellers as Maryland's first lady, Katie O'Malley; actor Clarke Peters of The Wire and the writer and performer Rain Pryor, Baltimoored will feature music from four local bands, humor sketches performed by radio actors and sound effects created in view of the audience.
The Pearlstone Theater will have the look and feel of an old-time radio show, with actors in 1940s-era attire performing on a set with a pink-and-white sign that will light up when the show is "on the air," and another that glows red when instructing audience members to applaud.
And later this month, anyone with a radio will be able to tune in to the results. Six hours of footage will be culled to two, which will be broadcast on WYPR on July 17 and 24.
"As far as we know, nothing like this has ever been done in Baltimore," says Laura Wexler, who founded Stoop with her friend, Jessica Henkin.
"We're poking a little fun at our hometown, but in a completely loving way," she says, adding that the sketches, written and performed by members of the Baltimore Improv Group, take on such hometown heroes as swimmer Michael Phelps and author Edgar Allan Poe, and local institutions, such as the Senator Theatre.
At a recent rehearsal, Baltimoored's host, Aaron Henkin, adjusts his brown fedora and leans into a microphone.
