Audience

Judging from their reaction, it seems that Tom Sawyer still enchants new generations of young fans. At least a fifth of the audience at Sunday's performance of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Chesapeake Arts Center's Studio Theatre were children. They frowned with concern as Tom witnessed a murder in the graveyard, snickered when his tattletale half-brother, Sid, got a reprimand from Aunt Polly and laughed openly when at his own funeral Tom pestered Sid by repeatedly touching his ankle from under a sofa.

Jeff Chang closes his jazz saxophone solo with a post-bebop flourish on a recent Monday night. "How was that?" he says happily to an audience of 10 or so at An Die Musik. "`Like Sonny' by John Coltrane. I told you it's a great tune." Chang, 30, plays alto saxophone in a quartet with Devin Arne, 21, on guitar, Blake Meister, 22, on bass and Shareef Taher, 24, drums. The group plays each Monday night at An Die Musik. Henry Wong, the eclectic proprietor, says he reserves Mondays for Peabody Conservatory jazz musicians so they can get experience performing.

Talk about a superhero showdown. In a risky counterprogramming move, NBC will begin pitting its fall hit, Heroes, tonight against Fox's anti-terrorist thriller, 24, and its larger-than-life protagonist Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland). The battle reflects a growing consensus among network programmers that quality shows will find an audience - even against the toughest competition. Already viewers are being forced to choose on Thursdays between ABC's Grey's Anatomy and CBS' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Dressed in the floor-length, gold-sequined gown that she wore to her son's wedding, Merle Stanley trilled a bluesy "Misty" before a crowd of about 500 yesterday at the Maryland Senior Idol 2007 competition. The song that begins and ends with the lyrics "Look at me" captured the attention of the crowd and the three judges. Before she lingered over the final "me," the audience had exploded into applause. "You are the real deal," judge Russ Margo said at the end of Stanley's first stage performance.

Before the tour van and the record deal, before the girls begging for autographs, they were middle school mall rats who made a terrible racket practicing in their parents' homes. They were kicked out of Towson Town Center for skateboarding. And they spent hours trying to chat up the pierced and tattooed employees of Hot Topic. Last year, the store started selling T-shirts with their logo. "Ultimately, I think we would like to take over the world eventually," says Alex Gaskarth, the 19-year-old lead singer of All Time Low, a punk-pop band made up of four 2006 graduates of Baltimore County high schools.

Don't trust the critics about the latest movies? Don't want to blindly follow the crowd to the current No. 1 box-office hit? Then you might be interested in a new Internet service that will tell you on Saturday morning how people your age, and your gender, responded to a movie that opened the night before.Cinemascore, Inc., a Las Vegas-based company that has been providing opening-weekend exit-poll data to the media and the movie industry for nearly two decades, is now not only putting the results on its free Web site -- www.cinemascore.

HANOVER, N.H -- Sticking firmly to the high road, former Sen. Bill Bradley shrugged off repeated jabs from Vice President Al Gore last night in their first joint appearance of the Democratic presidential campaign.Neither candidate managed to get off a memorable line or land a damaging blow. But the two rivals also committed no blunders as they fielded questions from a serious-minded audience of New Hampshire voters for more than an hour.Bradley seemed to get a slightly warmer reception with his responses, which even Gore praised, at one point, for their eloquence.

Rod Stewart is on the phone from his home in Los Angeles, apologizing for being late.Normally, the veteran rocker makes a point of being prompt about making interview calls, but not this time. He was "accosted by photographers" at lunch and couldn't leave the restaurant until the crowd was dispersed.Stewart isn't angry, really. Having spent the last three decades in the limelight, he's resigned to the fact that there will always be paparazzi lurking when he dines out. It's the price you pay for being a celebrity.

Editor's note: Jerdine Nolen today explores ways to cultivate youngsters' thinking, speaking and listening skills during the summer break. Her column appears biweekly.When thinking of ways to fill your children's unstructured hours during summer vacation, don't forget to leave room for practicing important educational skills learned during the academic year. Here are suggestions on how to practice thinking, speaking and listening skills throughout the summer.* Allow your children to take turns or have a part in planning family outings or vacations.

On a cold evening last February, spring burst upon the Shriver Hall Concert Series.All 1,118 seats were filled, and hundreds of ticket-seekers had to be turned away, for a recital by the young French pianist Helene Grimaud. This was a first in the 33-year history of the series -- Baltimore's oldest showcase for chamber music -- which only a few seasons earlier had seemed to be on the endangered list."It was a seminal event," says Bill Nerenberg, Shriver's managing director, of that evening's audience for Grimaud's recital.

Bowie Community Theatre is the first company to present Caroline Smith's "The Kitchen Witches" in our area. This Canadian play, which won the 2005 Samuel French Playwriting Award, is riding a mounting wave of culinary obsession fueled by the food network's constant stream of cooking shows and underscored by the success of the film "Julie and Julia." "The Kitchen Witches" adds generous dollops of comedy into the complex relationship of two mature cooking divas. Having once worked at a local television station where a live cooking show was produced, I found set designers Estelle Miller and Garrett Hyde to have created an authentic-looking, workable set where the chefs, cameraman and stagehand can function proficiently.

Standing O's current production of "Mr. Marmalade" is the edgiest and most complex in its two-year history. Founder and artistic director Ron Giddings offers audiences this black comedy, which enters unknown theatrical territory to provide an entertaining and disturbing evening. In 2004, at age 25, playwright Noah Haidle premiered his savage comedy in Los Angeles exploring how irresponsible parenting can damage children. In his director's notes, Giddings recalls seeing the play in 2005 when it ran off-Broadway at the Roundabout Theatre.

While tens of thousands of fans have been counting the days until the Baltimore Ravens' season opener Sunday, it's hard to imagine anyone happier to see the games begin than Jay Newman, general manager of WJZ -TV. Newman's CBS-owned station will carry 13 of the Ravens' 16 games this season, thanks to a network contract with the American Football Conference. For Channel 13 that means monster ratings - and a heavy flow of advertising revenue amid the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.

They began arriving four hours early, ignoring triple-digit heat-index levels for a chance to hoot and holler at Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin's health-care town hall meeting Monday night. Outspoken opponents of the Democratic overhaul plan, which Cardin supports, vented their hostility at the first-term senator. In an echo of similar events around the country, most of those in the capacity crowd at Towson University were clearly hostile to the reform proposal and dismissive of Cardin's attempts to defend it. "I know some of you don't want me to mention the facts, but listen to the facts," the senator said early on, drawing an angry response from opponents in the room and applause from supporters - who were both outshouted and outnumbered.

Will hip audiences who packed the house at the Charles for "Bruno" show up for a Korean film that's actually younger in spirit? Will older art-house audiences support an oddball comedy simply because it's novel entertainment? The Maryland Film Festival has bet "yes" on "Daytime Drinking," Noh Young-seok's no-budget road movie about a recent college graduate who tries to drown a romantic breakup in gallons of booze as he lurches from one misfired getaway to another across a snowy, underpopulated landscape.

For years, the Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad has thrilled and repulsed audiences with its absurd brand of over-the-top hard rock. The five guys in the Baltimore band wear outrageous costumes (like a giant horse head and a mad scientist outfit) and sing songs that are aggressively inappropriate. But after gigging around the region for a couple of years and releasing the album Die Humpin!, the band members felt like they'd hit a wall. They could only play the same Baltimore venues so many times, guitarist Ryan Graham said.

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.

The somber atmosphere of Old St. Paul's Episcopal Church could not dampen Ashland Croxton Jr.'s enthusiasm as he described his nephew Darryl Croxton, who died a month ago. The soft-spoken man of 78 spoke of his nephew's ability to touch an audience through his acting. "If he was sitting here right now in that pulpit and reading the Creation story," Ashland Croxton Jr. said, laughing, "I guarantee you he'd have you in tears." Three weeks ago, Darryl Winslow Croxton, a local actor and poet, was found dead in his Mount Vernon apartment, apparently of heart disease.

Chicago City Limits, the New York-based comedy troupe that will be bringing its act to the Columbia Festival of the Arts on Tuesday, asks only one thing of its audience: Do your homework. "Our entire show is improvisation and therefore based on suggestions we get from the audience," says Greg Triggs, a member of the troupe's touring company for the past 2 1/2 years. "We ask the audience for ideas, which become the foundation for that night's show." So come prepared with suggestions outlandish enough to challenge these hardened comedy veterans.

One garden that never welcomes rain is Annapolis Summer Garden - the outdoor theater across from City Dock where a downpour postponed last Friday's seating. Overhead lights had to be repaired "big-top" fashion by a technician working from a catwalk 20 feet above the audience. And about a half-hour into Smokey Joe's Cafe, a 15-minute timeout was called until the rain subsided and audience members could return to their seats. Theatergoing optimists who ignored the rain forecast and endured storm delays were amply rewarded by a cast of troupers who gave 100 percent despite a less-than-ideal performance environment.