Kennedy Center

`Cloudstreet' to open at Kennedy Center Cloudstreet, the epic Australian play based on Tim Winton's 1991 novel about two families sharing a house in Perth in the 1940s and 1950s, opens a three-day run at Washington's Kennedy Center tomorrow. A co-production by two of Australia's leading troupes, Company B Belvoir and Black Swan Theatre, Cloudstreet has toured Australia and Europe, and was named Best International Production at the Dublin Festival. Before Washington, it played a weeklong engagement at New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music, the show's only other appearance in the United States.

Broadway soprano Barbara Cook's tribute concert, Mostly Sondheim, competes for a Tony Award this Sunday, and just three days later she brings the program to Washington's Kennedy Center as part of its continuing Sondheim Celebration. The word "mostly" refers to the fact that the selections include a number of songs Stephen Sondheim says he "wishes he had written," including works by Irving Berlin, Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields, and Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. Cook, who will be accompanied by her long-time music director, Wally Harper, has performed Mostly Sondheim in London and New York.

First there was Giuseppe Verdi, then came Elton John. Both composers have had a go at the story of Aida, the Nubian princess whose Egyptian captor falls in love with her. Verdi composed the opera Aida. More than a century later, John wrote the music for the pop Broadway musical of the same name. The touring production of the Broadway show, which has lyrics by Tim Rice, begins a six-week engagement at Washington's Kennedy Center Tuesday. Set partly in modern days and partly in ancient Egypt, the libretto (by Linda Woolverton, Robert Falls and David Henry Hwang)

In popular memory, the 1940s are associated with a brutal world war and its aftermath. But the decade also saw a remarkable surge of artistic innovation. The works of bebop pioneer Charlie Parker, choreographer Martha Graham, composer Aaron Copland, director John Huston, to name a few, remain a powerful influence on American culture. In its 2004-2005 season, announced yesterday, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will draw national attention to this transformational time in the nation's life.

STARS from the worlds of opera, theater, film, music and dance have converged in Washington, D.C., for what has become a tradition the last 13 years: the bestowing of the Kennedy Center honors.The five artists honored last night at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for their cultural contributions to the nation are the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, the actress Katharine Hepburn, the mezzo-soprano Rise Stevens, the composer Jule Styne and the film director and writer Billy Wilder.

Every year for the past 14, "The Kennedy Center Honors: A Celebration of the Performing Arts" has been a way for television to end the year on a graceful note that elevates TV's brow and the viewers' spirits for two glorious hours.The 15th anniversary edition of the broadcast (9 p.m. to 11 p.m. tonight, WBAL, Channel 11) is marred by a jangling note of disharmony from the real world.The note was struck by Robyn Astaire, widow of Fred, who demanded $17,500 from the producers for use of clips from her husband's movies with Ginger Rogers, one of six artists being honored this year (with actors Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, jazzman Lionel Hampton, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and choreographer Paul Taylor)

Three directors, two dozen actors and three musicians will bring 19 of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales to life when the Royal Shakespeare Company performs Mike Poulton's two-part adaptation of the late-14th century stories at Washington's Kennedy Center, April 15-May 7. The use of three directors - RSC associate director Gregory Doran along with Jonathan Mumby and Rebecca Gatwood - is intended to reflect the numerous voices in the Tales, a...

Before opening its regular subscription season with some what-if Beethoven (a recent attempt at constructing a full overture out of a few tiny sketches he left behind), the National Symphony Orchestra will revel in absolutely authentic Beethoven for a week. The ensemble's annual Beethoven Festival, conducted this year by the Prague Philharmonia's founding music director Jiri Belohlavek, opens Friday and runs through Sept. 15 at the Kennedy Center in Washington. The lineup offers performances of the First, Third, Fourth and Seventh symphonies, as well as four overtures: Fidelio, Leonore No. 3, Egmont and Coriolan.

ROGER L. STEVENS, who died Monday at 87, was a remarkable man who excelled pretty much at whatever he tried. The lasting contributions of this real estate tycoon, though, were to culture.He spearheaded the construction of Washington's Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a complex that gave the nation's capital the polish it had lacked. Mr. Stevens also played a crucial role in the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts. And his 200 theatrical productions on Broadway and in London introduced audiences to writers ranging from Tennessee Williams to Tom Stoppard.