Intermission

If you think about it, intermission has always been an opportunity for the audience to take a breather - to allow theatergoers to stretch, get a drink, chat. To switch off temporarily. And that's the very last thing that Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks wants them to do. It's not that she ignores the great theatrical law that a comfortable audience is a more receptive audience. But the whole notion that a play is what happens in the breaks between the rest of your life rubs Parks the wrong way. "A play is a living thing," Parks says over the phone from her home in Venice Beach, Calif.

The Chesapeake Bayhawks had a disastrous third quarter against Boston on Saturday night, watching the visiting Cannons turn a one-goal deficit into a three-goal advantage with smarter play and more desire at both ends. Things didn't get any better for the Bayhawks in the fourth quarter. Boston made the third quarter the decisive one, and two quick goals at the start of the fourth left no doubt as the Cannons rolled to a 17-10 win in front of an announced crowd of 8,370 at Navy-Marine CorpsMemorial Stadium.

Critic's Pick-- Colin Farrell (above) and Shirley Henderson star in Intermission (8 p.m.-10 p.m., TMC), a love story about delinquents.

Baseball Tigers@Orioles 7 p.m. [MASN]: Hopefully, the All-Star break did the Orioles some good. They lost seven of eight before the season's halftime intermission and are three games under .500 as they begin a home series against Detroit. Garrett Olson, who has given up 12 earned runs in his past two games, is scheduled to start.

Baseball Tigers@Orioles 7 p.m. [MASN]: Hopefully, the All-Star break did the Orioles some good. They lost seven of eight before the season's halftime intermission and are three games under .500 as they begin a home series against Detroit. Garrett Olson, who has given up 12 earned runs in his past two games, is scheduled to start.

Verdi's "Simon Boccanegra" is usually performed with two intermissions -- after the prologue and the second act. Besides dramatic sense (25 years passes between the prologue and Act I), there are other reasons for that first intermission -- reasons that became clear Saturday when the Washington Opera presented its new production at the Kennedy Center.The single intermission (after Act II), which divided "Simon" into a 90-minute first half and an hour-long second half, was almost certainly motivated by economic necessity: a running time of three hours instead of four meant paying the orchestra less.

Katie Parise scored a game-high 14 points as York College defeated Goucher, 60-36, last night in a Capital Athletic Conference women's basketball game in York, Pa. The Spartans (12-5, 5-2) closed the first half with a 13-3 run for a 27-13 lead at intermission and used an 8-1 run early in the second half to push their lead to 41-21 with 14: 48 left. York had its largest lead, 59-28, with four minutes left. The Gophers (3-13, 0-7) were led by Kim Rogers' nine points.

POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. -- Marist rallied for an 86-73 victory over Mount St. Mary's last night in a Northeast Conference game.The Mountaineers (3-5, 0-1) shot 57 percent (17 of 30) in building a 42-35 lead at intermission.However, the Mounties managed two baskets in the first 7:15 of the second period, as Marist (4-5, 1-1) opened the period with a 15-4 run to take a 50-46 lead with 13:05 to play.Junior Michael Watson tied the game with a tip-in and a jumper with 12:20 left.Senior Izett Buchanan, the NEC's leading scorer at 29.4 points per game, broke the deadlock with a spinning three-pointer from the top of the key.

Anyone expecting to hear music below the prestigious conservatory level got a pleasant surprise Sunday at the Midshipmen Classical Concert at the Naval Academy. The young men and women performing in the academy's Main Chapel delivered genuine musical talent and heartfelt passion. The program covered a wide musical range from the 17th century to the 20th, with Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin among the composers represented. At intermission, my neighbor, academy math professor Sonia Garcia, said that one former and two current students were performing.

David Drake is coming out of the closet. Not about his homosexuality. He's been open about that for years and dealt with it frankly onstage in his acclaimed 1992 one-man show, The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me. No, this time he's coming clean about his surname - his legal surname, Drakula. Receiving its world premiere at the Theatre Project, Drake's latest one-man show, Son of Drakula, is about the Obie Award-winning former Marylander's efforts to trace his ancestry back to that other Dracula, a k a Vlad the Impaler.

Exactly 33 years ago today, I came to The Sun as a general assignment arts reporter, hired for six months to fill in for a staff writer on sabbatical. I often joke that it's been the longest six months of my life. These three decades have also been productive, fulfilling and enriching beyond anything I could have expected when I first crossed the threshold on the corner of Calvert and Centre streets. After a decade covering everything from rare books to dogs (I come from a canine-obsessed family)

Eugene O'Neill's last play, A Moon for the Misbegotten, is sometimes described as his greatest achievement, a fitting sequel to Long Day's Journey Into Night, also a largely autobiographical portrait of his family. While often praised for his poetic depiction of the human condition, O'Neill may be equally famous for his wordiness, repetition and the complexity of his characters, which can create difficulties for the actors. Written in 1943 and produced four years later, Moon garnered its first critical recognition with the 1973 Broadway production starring Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst.

Anyone expecting to hear music below the prestigious conservatory level got a pleasant surprise Sunday at the Midshipmen Classical Concert at the Naval Academy. The young men and women performing in the academy's Main Chapel delivered genuine musical talent and heartfelt passion. The program covered a wide musical range from the 17th century to the 20th, with Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin among the composers represented. At intermission, my neighbor, academy math professor Sonia Garcia, said that one former and two current students were performing.

JUST DAYS AGO YOU WERE DREAMING of a vacation in France, strolling through the Louvre and eating croissants outside a cafe on the Champs-Elysees. Now you'd rather be at home watching So You Think You Can Dance. After all, who wants to be stuck in a long security line at the airport, fighting through the crowds, contending with harassed ticket agents and worrying about what you can or can't take on the plane? Of course, you could get in the car and drive to the beach or take a trip to the mountains.

1 - BOSTON From Keith Lockhart, conductor, Boston Pops The essential experience: A Pops concert. Of course. "Come join 'America's Orchestra' on the Fourth of July if you want to hang out with half a million friends. A close second would be taking in a game at Fenway ... the way baseball should be. Like Chicagoans, we take our baseball seriously!" But don't miss: "Boston's old neighborhoods, like Beacon Hill, or stroll down in the Harbor district, check out the aquarium and watch the boats come in."

Critic's Pick-- Colin Farrell (above) and Shirley Henderson star in Intermission (8 p.m.-10 p.m., TMC), a love story about delinquents.

"White Lies, Dark Secrets" -- a play written and directed by Kevin Brown at the New Metropolitan Theatre Company, where he is artistic director -- starts out as a piece of environmental theater.Most of the first act takes place in a funeral parlor, and the audience members -- who are encouraged to wear black -- serve as mourners at the funeral of a woman named Doris Detweiler Sweetwater Brown. Wrapped around the playbill is a program for the memorial service, complete with a picture of the deceased and a detailed tribute, which ends with the part-whimsical, part-mercenary suggestion: "In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in her name to the Metropolitan Theatre Company."

Eugene O'Neill's last play, A Moon for the Misbegotten, is sometimes described as his greatest achievement, a fitting sequel to Long Day's Journey Into Night, also a largely autobiographical portrait of his family. While often praised for his poetic depiction of the human condition, O'Neill may be equally famous for his wordiness, repetition and the complexity of his characters, which can create difficulties for the actors. Written in 1943 and produced four years later, Moon garnered its first critical recognition with the 1973 Broadway production starring Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst.

If you think about it, intermission has always been an opportunity for the audience to take a breather - to allow theatergoers to stretch, get a drink, chat. To switch off temporarily. And that's the very last thing that Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks wants them to do. It's not that she ignores the great theatrical law that a comfortable audience is a more receptive audience. But the whole notion that a play is what happens in the breaks between the rest of your life rubs Parks the wrong way. "A play is a living thing," Parks says over the phone from her home in Venice Beach, Calif.

WASHINGTON - Whether yesterday's come-from-behind, 93-83 win over the Chicago Bulls will have any lasting effect on the Washington Wizards won't be answered until their next game, Friday in Boston. But, for now, the Wizards (12-28) will plant their rare, two-game winning streak and see if it doesn't grow into something big and productive. "That's good for us, especially with what we've been doing, winning one game and then going down six or seven," said guard Larry Hughes, who had a game-high 25 points.