Arena Players

The Arena Players, the country's oldest continuous African-American theater company, received a check for nearly $7,000 from WMAR-TV to help alleviate current financial problems.A portion of the money was raised from proceeds of tickets to "NewsChannel 2 Family Night" at Campbell Soup's 1996 Tour of Figure Skating Champions in February.Readings from playsReadings of scenes from plays written by Spanish and Hispanic-American playwrights will be offered at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Fell's Point Corner Theatre, 251 S. Ann St.The event is part of the Corner Theatre's Exploration Series.

Former Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon has paid off the $45,000 a court ordered her to donate to charities, resolving charges that she violated her probation in the criminal case that led to her leaving office. In early November, Dixon was charged with violating her probation because she had fallen behind on the donations. In court Friday, her probation officer said the $27,000 balance had been paid off, pending the clearance of two cashier's checks. Dixon, who said when the charges were filed that she couldn't keep up with the payments, declined to say where she found the money.

To celebrate the 39th season of continuous performances, Baltimore's Arena Players plans a week of activities (Sept. 8-14) featuring guest appearances, panel discussions and performances.All events are in conjunction with the opening of the theater group's first production of the 1991 season, "Blues in the Night," which premieres at 8:30 p.m. on Sept. 13 at Arena Playhouse, 801 McCulloh St.Activities include Open Mike Night for area talent at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 9; a Celebrity Performance Benefit at 7:30 p.m. Sept.

From his seat in a darkened theater, the 14-year-old boy told the performers and his fellow audience members something that had been bugging him for a long time. "Adults think that kids don't know when there's a problem, but we do," he said, after watching the debut production of Baltimore Performance Kitchen, the city's newest theater troupe. "We're not dumb," he said. "We know something is going on, even if you don't tell us. And if we don't know what is wrong, we're going to find out. " That was more than Satarah Cheeks could take.

Samuel H. Wilson Jr. died Sunday. He was 73. He was one of the founders and guiding spirits of Arena Players, Inc., the oldest continuously operating African American theater in the country. He was a Baltimore institution. The city is the poorer without him.And so, on a blue Monday, I pushed my way through the winter chill to see Baltimore attorney Edward Smith Jr., Arena's chairman of the board."We're at a crossroads right now, we're teetering on the brink of something totally unknown and it's scary," Mr. Smith is saying.

At my request, Sam Wilson Jr., 72, searches his mind, looking for that one special instant in time, that defining moment in the 40-year history of Baltimore's Arena Players."

WMAR-TV 2 and the Arena Players are accepting entries for the 10th Annual Drama Competition in celebration of Black History Month in 1992. The contest offers amateur black playwrights the opportunity to have their work produced on local television.The winning playwright is awarded $1,000 and will be able to assist in the play's production. The prize-winning play will be produced and shown on WMAR-TV 2 in February.All entries must be received by Sept. 6, 1991. Brochures including full competition details and rules are available at local universities, colleges and libraries, or can be obtained by calling WMAR-TV 2 at 377-2222.

Eugene Lee's "Killingsworth," receiving its East Coast premiere at Arena Players, is part murder mystery and part domestic drama, with an occasional digression into sitcom.Such lapses aside, when "Killingsworth" focuses on the angry young man at its center, it touches a universal chord.Director Donald Owens has double-cast most of the roles. Michael A. Kane, who appeared in Sunday's matinee, palpably conveyed Moriah Killingsworth's pent-up resentment. Hoping to be reconciled with a father he felt he could never please, Moriah returns home only to discover his father has been murdered.

Harvey E. Denmark Jr., who helped found the Arena Players theater group and acted with several local theatrical troupes, died Friday of heart failure at Maryland General Hospital. He was 80.Formerly a resident of Memorial Apartments, he had lived for the last several months in the Sandtown-Winchester Nursing Home.By day, Mr. Denmark was a supervisor in the investigative division of the Social Security Administration where he had been employed from 1946 to until his retirement in 1982. By night, he acted on local television and at Center Stage, the Spotlighters and the Arena Players.

"Joe Turner's Come and Gone" is the first play Arena Players has produced by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson. And though it was a little long in coming, the result is a tribute to this theater as well as to one of the most highly respected American playwrights of the past decade.At the risk of being glib, "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" is about comings and goings. Or to put it another way, like much of Wilson's work, it's about accepting the past so you can get on with the future.

June B. Thorne, a veteran Arena Players actress who was the first African-American woman to have her own show on Baltimore commercial television when she hosted "The Woman's Journal" on WMAR during the late 1960s, died Saturday of complications from dementia at Copper Ridge nursing home in Sykesville. Ms. Thorne was 82. June Butler, the daughter of an American Oil Co. stock clerk and a teacher, was born in Baltimore and raised in the 2400 block of Madison Ave., better known as Sugar Hill, the prosperous neighborhood that was between Druid Hill Park and North Avenue.

Jalen Cornish spent two hours catching footballs Sunday. There was nothing strange about it, except that the 13-year-old was sprinting across the Soccerdome with the ball, and football season does not start until August. Jalen was one of 40 children at the Pasadena Chargers' first arena football workout. The popularity of football in the area pushed officials for the youth football team to start an outdoor league, but when they could not pull that off, they sought to launch the county's first indoor program - and the response delighted them.

Samuel L. Kelley set his play Pill Hill in Chicago, but it could just as easily take place in Baltimore, or any city where a steel mill offers steady employment - for as long as the mill stays in business. At Arena Players, under Amini Johari-Courts' direction, an impressive acting ensemble portrays six black mill workers whose fortunes are changing. Though some of these men are trapped by the mill, others will escape it, and maybe, just maybe, succeed in buying a house in the fancy "Pill Hill" district.

About 10 years ago, Rashad Orange dazzled the audience as a winged monkey in Baltimore's Arena Playhouse production of The Wiz. His 6-year-old sister, Rakiya, who doubled as the yellow brick road and a dancer, captured the audience's imagination, as well. The siblings, now teenagers, are still acting in the youth theater with the Arena Players. But now they are taking their talents to a national audience as stars in the fourth season of HBO's The Wire, set to air this summer. The Wire, set in Baltimore, will shift gears in its new season, when the show follows students in a dysfunctional public school system.

In Pearl Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky, a former chorus girl/hooker in 1930s Harlem and a fresh-off-the-farm, churchgoing Southerner engage in a little question-and-answer game to get acquainted on a first date. As directed by Amini Johari-Courts at Arena Players, Janna Small and Douglass Goldman exemplify their disparate roles. Small, as the jaded, sophisticated chorus girl, toys with the innocent affections of Goldman, the naive Alabamian. Although each eventually will be far worse for this encounter, at this moment their lives hold a hint of hope.

A comedian, a female preacher, a blues singer, an ex-slave, two civil rights activists and a battered but unbowed victim of the Ku Klux Klan. The strong portrayals of these diverse women typify the range and power of Arena Players' production of Eve Merriam's And I Ain't Finished Yet. An anthology of seven scenes depicting African-American women beginning in the post-Civil War era, And I Ain't Finished Yet is a little like a vaudeville presentation of...

The new theater season marks milestone anniversaries for two Baltimore theaters. Center Stage turns 40, and Arena Players, billed as "the nation's oldest continuously operating African-American theater," turns 50. The fare at both is eclectic, and, indeed, variety is a keynote at most of the area's theaters for 2002-2003. At Center Stage, variety comes in the form of a blend of old and new, starting with the season opener - artistic director Irene Lewis' new take on J.M. Barrie's classic, Peter Pan, starring Jefferson Mays as the boy who refuses to grow up. Other highlights include the theater's first-ever co-production with Washington's Arena Stage, a revival of the Fats Waller revue Ain't Misbehavin' and two premieres that originated as Center Stage commissions, Warren Leight's No Foreigners Beyond This Point and Lynn Nottage's Intimate Apparel.

William Shakespeare will be one of the most celebrated dignitaries in the nation's capital when more than 20 organizations collaborate on a six-month, citywide Shakespeare in Washington festival in 2007. The festival, announced at the Folger Shakespeare Library yesterday, will run from January through June. Participants range from Washington institutions such as the Shakespeare Theatre, Washington National Opera and Kennedy Center to international companies such as the Kirov Ballet and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

LOS ANGELES - Al Lucas, a lineman for the Los Angeles Avengers, died yesterday afternoon after suffering an apparent spinal cord injury while trying to make a tackle early in the Arena Football League team's game at Staples Center, officials said. Lucas, 26, was injured on a kickoff return five minutes into the game against the New York Dragons. He was pronounced dead at California Hospital after attempts to revive him at the arena and hospital failed. He is the first player in the Arena Football League's 20-year history to die during a game.