Artistic Director

A process that could open an exciting new era in Philadelphia's theater life is under way at the Philadelphia Drama Guild. The search for an artistic director has begun in earnest. I'm told that the producing organization's officials want to move the guild into the top rank of regional theaters and are looking for the person who can put it there. Are they serious? Well, they've gone and hired themselves a bona fide headhunter - Greg Kandel of Management Consultants for the Arts Inc., Greenwich, Conn.

When Kelly Wright began working as a dancer in a production last season at the Walt Whitman Arts Center in Camden, she didn't realize the experience would change her life. But that's exactly what happened through The Spirit of Camden: Resurrection through Dance, an original concept by the center's artistic director, Desi Shelton-Seck. The music and dance production, which also has dialogue, explored the history of African Americans through dance. "My life had been going in a downward spiral since I lost my father" in 2007, said the 34-year-old Wright, of Camden.

Israel Hicks, 66, of Westchester, N.Y., chair and artistic director of the theater arts department at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, died of cancer Saturday, July 3, at a Westchester County hospital. Working at Mason Gross for nearly a decade, Mr. Hicks left a large footprint. In his first year as artistic director, he started a yearlong residency program at Shakespeare's Globe in London for juniors seeking a bachelor of fine arts degree. Students work with renowned British directors.

Harriet Power has resigned as the artistic director of Venture Theatre, a post she held for 2 1/2 years, citing differences with the company's board and management. Power said that although her tenure at Venture remained "inspiring and important to me, the founding executive director's and board president's artistic and organizational priorities, agendas and vision are so different from my own that it is best for me to step down. " Power said the disagreements did not concern artistic matters.

Aaron Posner, artistic director of the Arden Theatre Company since he helped found it 10 years ago, will drop his title and most of his administrative duties at the end of this season. He will however, continue to be actively associated with the company under the title of resident director. Posner said he asked to be freed from his full-time position and administrative duties to allow him time to pursue other activities. These include teaching at the University of the Arts, working with the grant-giving Independence Foundation and directing at other theaters, especially outside the area.

Mary Robinson talked yesterday about her "wish list" of plays she has always wanted to do but didn't have the opportunity in the years she was associate director of the Hartford (Conn.) Stage Company and a freelance director on the Off-Broadway scene. She wouldn't name any of the favorites, though, because three of the plays she will direct next season for the Philadelphia Drama Guild will come from that list and she did not want to be pinned down just yet except to say that one of them would be new and one most likely from Shakespeare.

John E. Allen Jr., founder and artistic director of Freedom Theater in North Philadelphia, died of lung cancer last night at Lankenau Hospital. He was 58 and resided in Southwest Philadelphia. Set up in 1966 - in the peak of the civil rights era and with the support of the militant Black People's Unity Movement - Freedom Theater spent its first four years operating out of a North Philadelphia storefront and performing literally in the streets. Its first year's operating budget was about $2,000.

Souvenir, Stephen Temperley's memory play about the 12-year relationship between 1940s society warbler Florence Foster Jenkins (more on that warbling in a moment) and her stalwart piano accompanist Cosme McMoon, gets evergreener every year. Its Broadway run was brief — though not quite as brief as Jenkins' real-life, one-night-only Carnegie Hall sellout — but Souvenir still thrives in the regions. Center City Theatre Works' current effort marks the show's third recent local production, and with good reason.

Hearing their 19-year-old daughter come out as bisexual was bewildering enough for a Muslim couple from south India whose own marriage was arranged by elders. "And I shaved my head," says Deen, a Brooklyn-based performance artist whose parents were stalwarts of their Muslim Indian community just outside Hartford, Conn. A decade later, when Deen - he uses only one name - told his parents of his intention to live the rest of his life as a man, the news was equally, if not more, confounding.

Friday Life in color "The Color of Science - An Evening With Prominent African American Scientists" is planned as a free and dynamic discussion at 5 p.m. Friday in the Franklin Institute, 222 N. 20th St. The evening's program, introduced by the center's vice president, Frederic Bertley, will begin with one-on-one interviews, followed by remarks from Larry Gladney of the University of Pennsylvania, Camille Ragin of Fox Chase Cancer Center, and...

JEN CHILDS and Tony Braithwaite don't just finish each other sentences. They also have the apparent ability to beam ideas telepathically to each other by barely uttering a sentence. "What do you . . . ," Childs asked, while scrolling through the in-progress script during a rehearsal of their cabaret-vaudeville hybrid, "Let's Pretend We're Famous. " The show runs tomorrow through March 25 at Plays and Players. "Yeah, yeah! There!" Braithwaite excitedly responded before Childs could say more, leading her to insert an idea neither of them had to articulate.

Tony Braithwaite, one of the region's premiere comic actors, will take the helm of Act II Playhouse in Ambler in July. The board of Act II, among the region's hottest stages over the last few years, named Braithwaite as the new producing artistic director, replacing Bud Martin. Martin, also a Broadway and West End producer, will continue on the board and be available to direct, as will Harriet Power, the associate artistic director, who will leave that post at the end of the season in May. She will continue on the theater faculty at Villanova University.

Clybourne Park , a provocative and funny play about the way people discuss race - has become a magical stage property, its rapid trajectory unstoppable. The play, set in the same Chicago house that figured in Lorraine Hansberry's groundbreaking 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun , premiered just two years ago Off-Broadway, hit London 18 months ago, and then Washington. It got legs, as they say - and quickly - with recent productions in Toronto and Germany. In March, Clybourne Park won Britain's prestigious Olivier Award, in April the Pulitzer Prize.

Jiri Zizka defected from Czechoslovakia, joined a small Philadelphia theater company, and, with his then-wife Blanka Zizka, transformed it into the Wilma Theater - one of the city's largest stage companies. On Tuesday, Mr. Zizka, 58, died of liver complications at his Philadelphia home. The first news of his death appeared in a banner with his picture across the Wilma's website late Wednesday, offering only his years of birth and death. That was all that remained on the site Thursday as his former wife, the Wilma's artistic director, began to make plans that will eventually include a memorial service in Philadelphia, a theater spokesman said.

NEW YORK - Nuance - the shadows and creases that provide depth and richness - is what makes the Off-Broadway production of Any Given Monday so different from its world-premiere version last year in Philadelphia. Philadelphia playwright Bruce Graham has reworked a bit of his striking, funny play, which overturns commonly held values in order to celebrate the very notion of values. But that's only partly why Any Given Monday differs in overall effect from its first productions at Theatre Exile in Center City, then Act II Playhouse in Ambler, joint producers of its premiere.

NEW YORK - Nuance - the shadows and creases that provide depth and richness - is what makes the Off-Broadway production of Any Given Monday so different from its world-premiere version last year in Philadelphia. Philadelphia playwright Bruce Graham has reworked a bit of his striking, funny play, which overturns commonly held values in order to celebrate the very notion of values. But that's only partly why Any Given Monday differs in overall effect from its first productions at Theatre Exile in Center City, then Act II Playhouse in Ambler, joint producers of its premiere.

Julian Rodescu, 58, who parlayed a busy vocal career and a deep love of music into a day job helping young musicians reach the next career level, died Saturday. A large man with a tender heart and gentle mien, Mr. Rodescu was a familiar sight around Broad and Locust Streets, where he would often settle in with a cell phone to conduct business as artistic director of Astral Artists, an organization providing professional development for promising classical talent. He had assisted the two-decade-old group in its early days, and assumed the role of artistic director in 2009.