Baltimore Playwrights Festival

The numbers tell an impressive tale: 266 plays by 158 playwrights produced by 25 companies during a 29-year span. Those figures from the Baltimore Playwrights Festival are about to tick higher. Starting Friday and wrapping up in early September, the festival's 30th anniversary season will present seven new works, staged at five theaters in the area. It's the culmination of an annual effort to shine a spotlight on local playwrights, an effort that started with the Vagabond Players , the country's oldest community theater.

Here's a look at the 2011 Baltimore Playwrights Festival: •"The Sculptress" by Marilyn Millstone. The former mistress of famed sculptor Rodin is visited in an insane asylum by a young female artist who tries to rekindle a creative spark. Friday through July 31 at Fells Point Corner Theatre, 251 S. Ann St. 410-276-7837, fpct.org. •"Web of Deceit" by Colin Riley. Mia is attracted to the online world; her roommate, Keysha, controls the computer. Both women are jolted by the arrival of Keysha's internet buddy.

It's a fascinating but tragic tale: Only 18 months after emigrating from Russia, a young college-educated man gets a job delivering pizza and is murdered during a botched burglary.It's a true story and the subject of a new drama, "Rim of the Wheel," by Baltimore playwright Daphne R. Hull.Co-produced by the Howard County Arts Council and the Director's Choice Theatre Company, "Rim of the Wheel" is one of 11 Baltimore Playwrights Festival presentations put on by area theater companies this summer.

More than two decades after pronouncing that greed is good, Gordon Gekko returns to movie screens this fall in "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps." On TV, "The Office" and "Mad Men" take divergent views of corporate America. And "Enron" the play recently ended a Broadway run. Business has been big business on stage and screen for years. One of the latest theatrical productions to take a cue from the business world made its debut this weekend at the Fells Point Corner Theatre as part of the 29th annual Baltimore Playwrights Festival.

From Shakespeare to transit systems, from language usage to landscaping. The four one-act plays at Fell's Point Corner Theatre, jointly titled The Past Is Present, tackle diverse subjects at the same time that they showcase some of the Baltimore Playwrights Festival's more talented writing and acting. All four are by festival veterans. The middle two -Memory Garden and Wilderness, both by Mark Scharf - are distinguished by strong naturalistic dialogue and character development. In the first, a young widow (portrayed by Janise Whelan with a convincing blend of sensitivity and anger)

The 15th annual Baltimore Playwrights Festival continues with John Morogiello's "Keeping It Aloft," opening tomorrow at the Vagabond Players.Directed by Mike Moran, this fast-paced farce concerns a wealthy middle-age woman who hires a recent ex-con as a gardener. Mayhem results when his identical twin, a respected doctor, shows up unexpectedly. In the process, themes are explored ranging from affirmative action to the quest for the meaning of life.Playwright Morogiello is the resident dramaturg at the Rep Stage Company in Columbia.

The Handel Choir of Baltimore, the city's oldest oratorio society, has openings for singers in all voice parts. Singers must be able to sight-read music and have previous choral experience. The season includes performances of Mozart's Requiem, a concert of festive music for chorus and brass, the Mass in B minor by Bach and the choir's annual performances of Handel's "Messiah." Rehearsals are held 7:45 p.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays from September through May. For details and to arrange an audition, call (410)

Out of the 54 scripts submitted to the ninth annual Baltimore Playwrights Festival competition, nine full-length plays and two one-acts were chosen for production this year at six local theater venues.This year's crop of new works written by residents of Maryland or former residents of the Free State varied again, as in previous years, in quality and originality.Themes covered: personal odysseys into the dark regions of the psyche, the possible discovery of immortality, troubles in darkest Africa, reflections on life and death, a musical spoof of the Moses story and zany antics in an old-age home.

Five Maryland museums have been awarded the maximum $75,000 annual operating grants by the federal Institute of Museum Services.Baltimore City Life Museums, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the National Aquarium in Baltimore, the Walters Art Gallery and the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels all received the highest allowable amount.Two other institutions, the Baltimore Museum of Industry and the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, received grants of $42,583 and $16,469 respectively.In all, the IMS awarded $20 million to 432 museums across the country.

In "The Blind Man's Children," Baltimore Playwrights Festival veteran Kathleen Barber returns to two subjects she has tackled before -- con artists and family.But in this case, the grifter -- a sideshow operator named Image Wilson -- is the more respectable character. The family, in contrast, is one in which the mother murdered her husband and his lover and crippled young Image, who was an innocent bystander.Barber isn't one to shy away from serious themes, and in this Fell's Point Corner Theatre production, she explores the nature of religious faith and the meaning of being an outcast.

FILM THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING -- 2:45 p.m. today; 4:10 p.m. Monday-Thursday. AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. $8.50. 301-495-6700 or afi.com/silver. The Man Who Would Be King is one of the rare "dream films" by a great director that really came true. In the 1950s, John Huston envisioned making this adventure with Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable as rogues who con their way into control of a mountain kingdom in India. Then Bogart died; then Gable died.

From Shakespeare to transit systems, from language usage to landscaping. The four one-act plays at Fell's Point Corner Theatre, jointly titled The Past Is Present, tackle diverse subjects at the same time that they showcase some of the Baltimore Playwrights Festival's more talented writing and acting. All four are by festival veterans. The middle two -Memory Garden and Wilderness, both by Mark Scharf - are distinguished by strong naturalistic dialogue and character development. In the first, a young widow (portrayed by Janise Whelan with a convincing blend of sensitivity and anger)

The letters have spilled out of one file into a second. Playwright Mark Scharf says he keeps them all, even though they all say the same thing in one form or another: No. "No," thank you, or "No" without the thank you or "No" with explanation or without. These rejection letters come from theater companies and playwriting contests, from one end of the country to the other. Their sting would be familiar to any writer who has aspired to publication or production. Radio raconteur, short story writer and novelist Garrison Keillor used to say that as a youth he spent years writing for the New Yorker, only they never knew it. Scharf has written for any number of stages, some of which have taken notice.

The 19th annual Baltimore Playwrights Festival opened last weekend at three area theaters with plays set in such varied locales as war-torn Yugoslavia and an isolated fast-food restaurant in the American heartland. The quality varied, too, but each of the productions reviewed here has something to recommend it, including some particularly fine performances. At Fell's Point Corner Theatre, Ronda Cooperstein's ambitious "Dusting Belgrade" focuses on an aging foreign correspondent named Claude who returns to Belgrade accompanied by a young photographer.

It's a fascinating but tragic tale: Only 18 months after emigrating from Russia, a young college-educated man gets a job delivering pizza and is murdered during a botched burglary.It's a true story and the subject of a new drama, "Rim of the Wheel," by Baltimore playwright Daphne R. Hull.Co-produced by the Howard County Arts Council and the Director's Choice Theatre Company, "Rim of the Wheel" is one of 11 Baltimore Playwrights Festival presentations put on by area theater companies this summer.

90-voice French choir and England's Choir of St. Mary's Church will performThe Choirboys of Passy-Buzvenal, a 90-voice French choir founded in 1987, will perform a program with ancient liturgical music at 5:30 p.m. Sunday at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, 5300 N. Charles St. Directed by Jean-Michel Angelloz, the choir will also sing at the regular 11 o'clock liturgy that morning.The Choir of St. Mary's Church, Warwick, England, a choir of 30 boys and 16 men, will present a concert at 7:30 p.m. July 29 at Old St. Paul's Church, Charles and Saratoga streets.