While Fringe and Source are both experimental laboratories and incubators of new talent, they differ in that Fringe is uncurated, whereas Source hand-picks talent from around town to create new, exciting projects. For this final week, Source commissioned one-acts from standout playwrights behind last year’s 10-minute plays. OK, I’ll admit I went to see Group F last night because I’m a huge fan of HBO’s “The Wire” and I wanted to see Delaney Williams (the artist formerly known as Bill Delaney) in Her Love Was Vertigo.

Willams plays John Fox, an unapologetic womanizer living lay to lay, and (as if that weren’t bad enough) trading securities to manipulate markets as shamefully as he manipulates people. Actually, he’s a kind of likable guy. We meet Fox mid-hangover, as he charms a cuckolded would-be murderer (Daniel Eichner) into being his biographer. Enter two seductive women (Annie Grier and Kimberly Schraf), and cue the love triangle.

Playwright Estep Nagy has a knack for snappy repartee, but in this staged reading, actors, particularly Williams, struggled to deliver lines with consistent motivation, sometimes falling flat (maybe by their third try on Sunday they’ll learn the script). The act runs an hour and forty minutes; I’m no editor, but Fox’s paroxysms on economics didn’t do it for me. The plotting and sex, however, never got old.

By contrast, The Mating of Angela Weiss, by Renee Calarco, was about a lack of sex. Angela (Yasmin Tuazon) learns timing is everything as she tries to breed captive pandas (given their sex drive, it’s no wonder they’re almost extinct). As much as she wants a baby panda, her mother, who adopted Angela from China, wants to get pregnant. Poignant performances illustrate the parallels in their lives as the play seamlessly jumps to Angela’s childhood and back. Barbara Papendorp and Francisco Reinoso round out other characters (including the best pandas I’ve ever seen portrayed on stage). This endearing gem alone is worth the $18 admission.

GROUP F OF THE SOURCE FESTIVAL ONE ACT PLAYS PERFORM JULY 10TH AT 8 P.M. AND JULY 11TH AT 2 P.M. AT THE SOURCE, 1835 14TH STREET NW. (866) 811-4111

“Break a leg” is the traditional, if superstitious, pre-curtain benediction for actors. It is not meant to be taken literally. Sadly, one of the stars of Arena Stage’s Legacy of Light, Carla Harting, suffered compound fractures in her left femur and tibia after getting hit by a car while biking near the Jefferson Memorial over the weekend. Coincidentally, just ten days earlier, many DC cyclists met at the Jefferson Memorial to embark on the annual Ride of Silence to commemorate those injured or killed while riding bicycles.

An actress imported from New York, Harting had been playing Dr. Olivia Hasting Brown, an astrophysicist with ovarian cancer who searches for a surrogate mother to bear her a child. Harting will be unable to perform the final two weeks of this World Premiere run, which is scheduled to close on June 14. I was surprised to learn there were no understudies trained for the part. This meant both matinee and evening shows on Sunday had to be cancelled.

While Harting was undergoing surgery Sunday at George Washington Hospital, Director Molly Smith was scrambling to find a replacement. Fortunately, a talented veteran of the DC stage, Jennifer Mendenhall, was just closing the Solas Nua production of Woman and Scarecrow on Sunday. No sooner did one engagement close before Mendenhall was immediately thrust into rehearsals all day Monday and today. She is scheduled to jump into the roll tonight. We wish Harting a quick recovery, and for Mendenhall we bid you, “Good …”

And that’s probably a good thing: It was difficult enough last year running around town, reading reviews, and comparing notes with friends to strategize the best way to get a flavor of the festival (believe me, I tried).

More Fringe buzz below the jump, including venue news, metro accessibility, and...button tips!

How does a festival weed out artists while preserving a “unjuried, uncurated” philosophy? Some festivals employ a weighted lottery that balances solo acts, local performers, musicals, etc. At the seat of the nation’s democracy, Fringe went the egalitarian way: first-come, first serve. Putting a show together at the last minute doesn’t cut it anymore in this town.

According to festival organizers, shows on the waiting list may still get a venue, as an average of five to seven shows drop out each year (you know, when their producers learn there’s an entrance fee, or that they actually have to… do a show). Additionally, producers can opt to find their own venues. However, Fringe is not accepting just any venue; venues must be located within a certain radius of Fort Fringe, the box office (607 New York Ave, NW).

A big change this year that will save you cab fare: ALL venues will be downtown, metro-accessible, and within walking distance of each other. In fact, 14 venues will be located in the seven blocks between Fort Fringe and 7th & D St. “This year we want to make it easy,” says executive director Julianne Brienza. “Make it easy to go to shows, make it easy to look up shows on the website.”

To that end, the Fringe website will give each show its own “wall” (Fringe meets Facebook!) where audiences can post comments about a show. “We’re trying to cultivate the uncurated voice of the nation’s capital and that extends to our audience,” Brienza explains. Naturally, walls will link to the City Paper’s Fringe and Purge blog reviews.

The website improvements, new computers for in-house graphics and videos, and broader outreach are thanks to an UPSTART grant from the D.C. commission on the Arts and Humanities. Funds are also expanding the scope of the Fringe Training Factory to teach kids at an inner-city art center to produce a show for this year’s festival.

Last year, D.C. Fringe adopted the practice used by other festivals of requiring everyone to buy a $5 button for the festival. In 2008, Fringe sold 21,500 show tickets, but quickly ran out of buttons. Initially only expecting to sell 5,000, Fringe sold 10,000. Even now, they still sell 5-10 a month for the Fringe benefits (discounts at local theaters and shops), or maybe because they’re so stylish.

Unlike festivals in other cities, 85 percent of the Capital Fringe audience is local. This year, they’re hoping to draw in out-of-towners, with advertisements hitting the Metro as early as May. What this means is that Fringe audiences better plan early, or else just like some artists, they might find themselves being turned away.

Stock tip of the week: invest in button manufacturing.

*Fringe technically involves more shows than it "hosts": That is, certain shows that go up under the banner of fringe find their own venues; these shows aren't included in the 104 tally. Last year, 120+ shows went up during the festival. Quibbles! But only 'cuz we care.

But with no shortage of theater in DC, audiences value quality over quantity.

To woo subscribers, theaters assemble line-ups that include must-see classics, beloved musicals, and Tony-award winners. And then there’s Woolly Mammoth, which on Saturday unveiled an entire season of brand-new shows no one has ever heard of...just as they have done for 30 years in a row. It takes a brave and trusting subscriber to buy a series sight-unseen.

To introduce Woolly’s débutantes, artistic director Howard Shalwitz and dramaturg Miriam Weisfeld led company members in readings from each new play. In trademark Woolly style, these push the envelope on what can be considered a play, but based on the titillating readings, each show promises to be provocative and entertaining.

Shalwitz wanted an anniversary season that engages its audience in a discourse on democracy and “our historic moment.” Of course, as he reassured us, “Comedy is our home. We like shows that don’t take themselves too seriously.”

The season opens with the world premiere of Eclipsed by African playwright and actress Danai Guirira, who astounded local audiences in her Helen Hays Award-winning performance of In the Continuum (2007 HH award for best actress, best non-resident play), about an African woman struggling with cultural mores in announcing she has AIDS. Eclipse continues to highlight experiences of African women by exploring the five wives of Liberian warlord Charles Taylor and the fallout from civil war.

If you can’t take East German censorship circa the fall of the Berlin Wall sitting down, you don’t have to. The actors and audience alike will perambulate Woolly’s theaterspace—so wear comfortable shoes. Playwright Charles Mee’s adaptation of Brecht’s Full Circle is more of an event than a play, featuring seven company members including Shalwitz, and asking the question, “Can a disgraced artistic director restore a nation’s moral bearings?”

The next non-play is a one-man dialogue with Mike Daisey, who challenged Fringe Festival audiences last summer with If You See Something, Say Something. When Woolly commissioned the world premier of The Last Cargo Cult. In preparing the piece, Daisy visited Tanna, an island in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, where locals worship symbols of American capitalist power—especially cargo left by ships during World War II.

Clybourne Park takes Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun as a point of departure, but changes the perspective to that of a white neighborhood in 1950s Chicago faced with a black family moving in. In Act II, playwright Bruce Norris trains his lens closer to home by peeking in on that same neighborhood in present day.

Woolly was surprisingly furtive about the 5th play of the season, refusing to announce even the title until two weeks from now so as not to steal the thunder from the theater where it will premiere. However it has Mammoth footprints all over it, as the play absurdly follows an “anti-romantic” boy and girl, jumping forward and backward in time throughout their lives.

Perhaps in an attempt to make sure the Obamas don’t get homesick, Woolly has also booked two prominent Chicago troupes. Legendary political sketch comedy group Second City will present Barack Stars as an offering in this summer’s Fringe Festival. In December, the Neofuturists will bring back Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, whereby they stage 30 plays in 60 minutes, choosing plays each night based on the roll of a dice.

As the Mammoth turns 30, Shalwitz remarks that “Becoming an adult is scary because Woolly wants to be youthful, forward learning and provocative.” C’mon Woolly, you may grow old, but you’ll never grow up.

UPDATE ~ 4:45 p.m., 3/5/09: Arena Stage has shortened its 2009-10 subscription offerings in order to prepare for the return to its renovated home in Southwest D.C. The decision was not financially based, but was intended to avoid overproducing during a transition year. When it opens in Fall, 2010, the Mead Center for American Theater will add a third stage, thereby enabling more programming than Arena’s typical eight-show subscription. Thanks to Kirstin Franko for correcting me on this.

Disclaimer: Sheffy Gordon is a season usher at Woolly Mammoth as well as other theaters in DC. The views expressed here are his alone.

Next to Normal at Arena

D.C.’s Arena Stage has been doing its fair share of boasting lately. In less than two months, goes the hype, not one but two Arena shows will be running simultaneously on Broadway. As if that weren't enough, Arena is calling itself the first regional theater to claim this honor twice, having sent a pair of shows to Broadway in the 1979-80 season as well.

What's their secret? What makes Arena Stage and D.C. in general such an attractive launching pad for a Broadway show?

"Quality of production departments," says Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith. She credits the staff, many with decades of experience at Arena, for putting "Principles over personalities." Take that, Broadway!

33 Variations celebrated its world premiere at Arena in August 2007. The Broadway version stars Jane Fonda as a music historian trying to deduce why Beethoven, after initially refusing to compose variations on a waltz, obsessively wrote the titular thirty-three. In the spirit of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and Indian Ink, 33V creates parallel contemporary and historic worlds to unravel an academic mystery.

Next to Normal, which opens on tax day, presents a nuclear family facing a case of mental illness initiated by a traumatic event. Although it’s a musical, this show about bipolar disorder, drug abuse (prescription and otherwise), and death eschews a toe-tapping score and a feel-good ending: N2N literally zaps any Broadway formulas.

"Each of these projects are unusual theater pieces and shows the range of the work we produce at Arena. New York is always looking for strong projects on subject matter that hasn't been seen before," Smith wrote in an email.

While I know Broadway is more than its hackneyed image of outrageous chorus numbers strung together with implausible love stories and sophomoric humor, I haven't found many Broadway plays that deal with chronic illness (RENT notwithstanding). Yet Arena is sending New York two shows centered on sickness. Just as Beethoven dealt with deafness, Fonda's character in 33V is stricken with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). Maybe all this talk of health care coming out of Washington is infecting spheres beyond politics.

To be fair, N2N actually premiered at New York's Second Stage (Off-Broadway)—so Arena is more of its foster parent. In fact, the show's five Helen Hays nominations are in "non-resident production" categories (Best Show, four acting nominations including one for Alice Ripley). Nonetheless, Smith is proud that while already known for producing new work, Arena also "gives new work a chance to become completely formed in the first, second or third production."

Yet all this success makes me wonder about another fantastic Arena musical that premiered last year, The Women of Brewster Place. This stunning adaptation of Gloria Naylor's best-selling novel dazzled audiences with a powerful fusion of drama, music, artistry, and raw talent. But audience reaction and critical acclaim aren't enough to bring a show to Broadway, Smith says—you need commitment from the producers to take it to the next production.

Arena is generally a producing house geared towards a D.C. audience. (Although this season, while renovating its main stage in SW D.C., it’s importing a boatload of shows.) Yet, for 33V and N2N, Arena partnered with NY producers with an eye towards Broadway: Tectonic Theater/Moises Kaufman (of Laramie Project fame), and David Stone, respectively. In May, Arena welcomes yet another "pre-Broadway engagement", Looped, which replaces Arena's canceled Sweet Bird of Youth.

Of course, Smith also credits Arena's success to "a very bright, intelligent audience that can understand and fall in love with any type of great theater." Aw, shucks.

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