Everyman Theatre

Everyman Theatre will split its 2012-2013 season between two venues, but a common thread unifies the plays — all are Baltimore premieres. There will be six works in all, up from the usual five. The lineup includes recent works by such notable playwrights as Tracy Letts, David Margulies, Suzan Lori-Parks and Yasmina Reza, as well as adaptations by Tom Stoppard and Thornton Wilder. But the biggest news next season is the company's relocation to Fayette Street, around the corner from the Hippodrome in an area that is fast becoming a viable arts district on the city's west side.

Audiences during the Great Depression had their spirits lifted by "You Can't Take It With You," the wacky 1936 comedy by George S. Kaufmanand Moss Hart. The lively Everyman Theatre production seems likely to have the same uplifting effect for audiences during our lingering Great Recession. Among other things, this play is a great way to lower the unemployment rate in the acting community. The 19 actors in the cast are kept fully employed portraying a zestfully eccentric family, its permanent houseguests and befuddled visitors.

Audiences during the Great Depression had their spirits lifted by "You Can't Take It With You," the wacky 1936 comedy by George S. Kaufmanand Moss Hart. The lively Everyman Theatre production seems likely to have the same uplifting effect for audiences during our lingering Great Recession. Among other things, this play is a great way to lower the unemployment rate in the acting community. The 19 actors in the cast are kept fully employed portraying a zestfully eccentric family, its permanent houseguests and befuddled visitors.

Everyman Theatre will split its 2012-2013 season between two venues, but a common thread unifies the plays — all are Baltimore premieres. There will be six works in all, up from the usual five. The lineup includes recent works by such notable playwrights as Tracy Letts, David Margulies, Suzan Lori-Parks and Yasmina Reza, as well as adaptations by Tom Stoppard and Thornton Wilder. But the biggest news next season is the company's relocation to Fayette Street, around the corner from the Hippodrome in an area that is fast becoming a viable arts district on the city's west side.

Design is important to Lisa Reed. The 35-year-old Hampden resident has made it her career as an architect at Cho Benn Holback + Associates. The shape of something is also important when it comes to her personal style. When we "Glimpsed" Reed at Everyman Theatre's gala at the American Visionary Art Museum, she explained her style philosophy: "As long as I have on one nice thing, I can cheapen everything else up and be a little more trendy. But I like to keep one classic piece in the mix."

Playwrights love to place human beings and their shortcomings beneath the unforgiving gaze of a microscope. In "Stick Fly," Lydia R. Diamond offers a variation on this methodology — the title refers to entomologists who study the movements of flies by gluing them to sticks. Diamond's specimens don't frequently find themselves put up for observation in the theatrical realm: upper-income African-Americans. The 2007 play, which has received a finely acted, handsome production at Everyman Theatre , centers around family members who arrive at their posh summer home on Martha's Vineyard — the "white side.

An area theater that does consistently fine work is beginning its last season in its current home. Everyman Theatre's upcoming season is slated to be its final one on N. Charles Street, in the Station North arts and entertainment district. Work is well under way on its new home downtown in the renovated Town Theater, just around the corner from the Hippodrome Theatre. So this will be a season to remember in the long local history of Everyman. It kicks off Sept. 7 with Lorraine Hansberry's classic drama, “A Raisin in the Sun.” This timeless story about the aspirations of a black family in Chicago in the 1950s still resonates in any discussion of the American dream.

"Shipwrecked!" is stuffed from port to starboard with kid-friendly storytelling and the power of the imagination. The adventure story by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies, which opens at the Everyman Theatre Friday, has fantastic sea creatures and "tribes" of aborigines represented by intentionally rudimentary puppets. The sound effects are created on stage in full view of the audience. And just three actors (Clinton Brandhagen, Bruce Nelson and Tuyet Thi Pham)

A year from now, Everyman Theatre will begin packing for the big move to a freshly renovated venue on the west side of town. To help stem any regrets, the title of the last show in the company's current Charles Street location will carry a familiar admonition: "You Can't Take It With You. " That 1936 Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy about family, society and politics by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart is one of three classic 20th-century works...

One hundred years ago this summer, the Empire Theater opened as one of the premier vaudeville houses on downtown Baltimore's west side. After decades of dormancy, the landmark is set to house live performances once again as the new home of Everyman Theatre . Theater representatives and supporters staged a block party Tuesday morning to celebrate the start of a $17.7 million renovation of the historic building at 315 W. Fayette St. for...

The domestic drama unfolding on the stage of Everyman Theatre these days in Michael Weller's "Fifty Words" can get pretty messy — stories about marriage frequently are. But the set that the two actors in this play get to inhabit is a study in calm, careful planning and execution. That set is the work of Tim Mackabee, who is making his local professional debut as scenic designer with this production. It's a particularly satisfying homecoming for the New York-based Mackabee, who was born in Baltimore, raised in Perry Hall and attended the Carver Center for Arts and Technology, the magnet high school in Towson.

Set designer Daniel Ettinger and technical director Bill Jamieson spent months painstakingly constructing a world accurate down to the tiniest detail, from the wallpaper pattern to the electrical sockets. And they weren't one whit less meticulous, even though they knew that in four short weeks, their hard work on "Private Lives," the current Everyman Theatre production, would be ripped apart and tossed in the trash. "Creating a set is like making music," says Jamieson, who has worked at the Charles Street theater for the past decade.

An area theater that does consistently fine work is beginning its last season in its current home. Everyman Theatre's upcoming season is slated to be its final one on N. Charles Street, in the Station North arts and entertainment district. Work is well under way on its new home downtown in the renovated Town Theater, just around the corner from the Hippodrome Theatre. So this will be a season to remember in the long local history of Everyman. It kicks off Sept. 7 with Lorraine Hansberry's classic drama, “A Raisin in the Sun.” This timeless story about the aspirations of a black family in Chicago in the 1950s still resonates in any discussion of the American dream.

One hundred years ago this summer, the Empire Theater opened as one of the premier vaudeville houses on downtown Baltimore's west side. After decades of dormancy, the landmark is set to house live performances once again as the new home of Everyman Theatre . Theater representatives and supporters staged a block party Tuesday morning to celebrate the start of a $17.7 million renovation of the historic building at 315 W. Fayette St. for...

A year from now, Everyman Theatre will begin packing for the big move to a freshly renovated venue on the west side of town. To help stem any regrets, the title of the last show in the company's current Charles Street location will carry a familiar admonition: "You Can't Take It With You. " That 1936 Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy about family, society and politics by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart is one of three classic 20th-century works...

When Everyman Theatre was founded in 1990, the resident company included Kyle Prue, who went on to perform in two dozen works over the years. But in 2006, he moved from being in front of the spotlights to making sure the spotlights and everything else at Everyman functioned smoothly, as the company's production manager. Prue had a practical reason for taking that job. "I have a wife and family," he said. "I wanted a little more of a steady paycheck, something 52 weeks a year, instead of nine- or 10-week chunks.

In his memoirs, Tennessee Williams wrote that "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" was his favorite play, the one that "comes closest to being both a work of art and a work of craft." The current production at Everyman Theatre, co-produced with Columbia's Rep Stage, does Williams' assessment proud.The second-act confrontation between Timmy Ray James' mean-spirited Big Daddy and his son Brick, played with intense self-loathing by Kyle Prue, is some of the best acting seen yet at this small gem of a theater.

The Everyman Theatre lobby held an air of relaxed anticipation as some 100 guests celebrated a first -- the first time students and faculty from the Baltimore School for the Arts would work with actors and production staff from Everyman's professional Equity theater company. In a few minutes, these theater buffs would get to see the result of this venture -- a performance of "The Crucible" to benefit the FANS (Friends Assisting New Stars) Scholarship Fund of the School for the Arts. Already, the "buzz" was good.

Playwrights love to place human beings and their shortcomings beneath the unforgiving gaze of a microscope. In "Stick Fly," Lydia R. Diamond offers a variation on this methodology — the title refers to entomologists who study the movements of flies by gluing them to sticks. Diamond's specimens don't frequently find themselves put up for observation in the theatrical realm: upper-income African-Americans. The 2007 play, which has received a finely acted, handsome production at Everyman Theatre , centers around family members who arrive at their posh summer home on Martha's Vineyard — the "white side.

The past can take us unawares. It might be something like Proust's famous cookie that suddenly plunges us back into lives we long ago packed away. It could be more direct, like the chance meeting that occurs at the start of the bittersweet Steven Dietz comedy "Shooting Star" currently onstage at Everyman Theatre . Elena Carson and Reed McAllister were lovers back in the '70s before going their separate ways. Now pushing 50, they find themselves at the same airport one day in 2006, just as a snowstorm is gradually grounding flights.