Most 9-to-5 office drones know the feeling of being trapped in a mundane existence that is punctuated by daily routines—and the only way to survive is by the blind hope that tomorrow will somehow be better. Of course, being figuratively buried in paperwork hardly compares to the plight of Winnie, the protagonist of Samuel Beckett’s 1961 play, Happy Days—who begins the play, quite literally, half-buried in a pile of earth. Winnie doesn’t question how she got there; she just goes about her ritualistic business of being there and prattling away to whoever will listen—which, in this case, is her inattentive husband, whose terse responses aren’t nearly as important to her as is his simple presence. As time passes, however, so does whatever hope Winnie has of pulling herself out of her sinking situation: By the time Act II rolls around, she’s buried up to her neck—a development that should provide audience members with plenty of material for their next water-cooler chitchat. The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, 2700 F St. NW; see kennedy-center.org for a complete schedule. $65. (202) 467-4600. —Matthew Borlik

…and all the men and women, merely frivolous consumers. If you’re in the market for miscellany, head over to Arena Stage this Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m, where objects no longer fit for the theater audition to receive an extended run in the cruel theater of our lives. Arena Stage’s discarded costumes, props, and yes, office furniture, could be yours!

Arena Stage is located at 1101 Sixth Street, SW

When Bruce Buono and his wife moved from St. Louis to Alexandria last year, he was excited about D.C.’s theatrical offerings. Going through the Warner Theatre’s Web site, he found a Broadway-based series and paid $570 up front for a pair of season tickets to see the touring productions of shows like The Producers and Sweet Charity.

But Buono and his wife didn’t see a single show. Right before Thanksgiving, the Warner Theatre announced that The Producers, which was supposed to run from Nov. 21 to Nov. 26, had been canceled. At the time, general manager Barrett Newman said ticket holders should contact Ticketmaster for refunds, noting that “the Thanksgiving week proved to be challenging for ticket sales.” In a sympathetic nod to the ticket-holders’ plight, Warner looped some lyrics from The Producers on their telephone line. “Unhappy. Unhappy. Very Unhappy,” the hold message sang.

That was just the beginning. In March, the Washington Post reported that, of the five shows composing the series, none had been produced. Apparently, Baci Management, the Baltimore-based booking agent, had botched the whole program. Worse, ticket holders hadn’t received any refunds. Buono says he has no idea what’s going on with Baci. “I’ve never been ripped off that way…It really soured our mouths.”

As for Baci, it doesn’t look good. The phone line at the company’s Baltimore office has been disconnected. And last week their furniture went up for auction. The trustee listed for Baci by American Auctions & Appraisals Inc., did not return calls for comment.

In his budget for Fiscal 2008, Mayor Adrian Fenty has proposed $250,000 be set aside for the Lincoln Theatre, half of what the theatre requested. The sum would come from the fiscal 2008 budget for the D.C. Commission on Arts and Humanities, the Budget Support Act says.

But according to executive director Janice Hill, without a $500,000 sum from the city, the theater will be forced to abandon its subsidized programs–programs that are either free to the public or are produced by nonprofit organizations. That means no more high school graduations at the theater, no more free dance performances for middle schoolers, and no more annual events commemorating the Holocaust, Hill says. “It’s not good…I’ve asked for the city’s help. They have responded by giving us half of what we asked for.”

In January, the Washington Post reported that the 85-year-old Lincoln Theatre had $1,362 in the bank and might close unless it received an influx of cash fast.

Now, the theater is operating in the red. “We’ve borrowed deep into our credit line,” Hill says. “We are robbing Peter to pay Paul. This does not help us. Like all similar historical institutions, we cannot make it through rentals alone. This does not provide adequate help, nor assist in providing funding to re-tool the theatre to be a primarily, commercial facility.”

In February, the Fenty administration facilitated a grant from the Department of Housing and Community Development, Hill says, to provide cultural enrichment programs for underserved students and seniors, but that money was not earmarked for operational costs and cannot be used for the endangered nonprofit programming.

Meanwhile, the theater’s lease, under the U Street Theatre Foundation, is up in June, Hill says. And while the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development has proposed that a developer take over the historic theater, Hill says “that strategy would have to be handled very cautiously.” She worries a developer with commercial interests would have a “tough time responding to the original mission of the theater.”

Cutting the subsidized programs also threatens the theater’s mission, Hill says. These programs are “highly valued” and are part of the theater’s commitment to providing services to the community. For example, she says, 1,200 middle school students attended the Capitol Movement Project dance performance for free March 29. The Lincoln Theatre has also held graduation ceremonies for Cesar Chavez Public Charter School for Public Policy, Booker T. Washington Public Charter School, and Roosevelt High School.

“The new administration…may not be educated or sensitized to the value, the passion, the energy the community feels,” about the theater, Hill says.

The mayor’s budget also proposes $500,000 for the Source Theatre, whose financial woes made headlines last year.

Carrie Brooks, spokesperson for the mayor, says that, in addition to the money included in the budget, the two theaters will be able to compete for additional funding through the city’s competitive grant process.

As I was leafing through the pages of our newspaper a couple weeks ago, I was struck by an ad for The Theatre Lab. It was a photograph of a bearded man and a shmata-sporting woman huddled over a book. Beneath the pair was an invitation: “Take an improv class like no other, The Holocaust Project.”

Improv and Holocaust. Now there are two words you don’t see together very often. Immediately, I imagined a group of actors lined up on stage while the audience members yelled out dramatic commands:

“You’re scrounging crumbs to eat!”

“You’re hiding under the floorboard!”

“You’re in line for the gas chamber!”

My mind raced from one unsavory scenario to the next. Intrigued and just a little disturbed, I called The Theatre Lab.

As it turns out, The Holocaust Project is a 12-week class culminating with a performance at the Washington DC JCC’s Theater J. It’s the brainchild of Dorothy Neumann, a Theatre Lab instructor. She says the project is a bit like a trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where visitors receive cards with information about people who were alive during the period of Nazi persecution. “Each actor will be assigned a character, someone who was in the Holocaust, who survived it or did not. They will have certain details of this character’s life, but as with all acting, they’ll have to fill out part of these characters’ lives themselves,” says Buzz Mauro, co-director of The Theatre Lab.

He says the project is geared towards actors who crave an “intensive dramatic experience,” but it’s also “for people who want to learn about the Holocaust and explore it in a non-traditional way.” Theatre Lab is even offering students an opportunity to discuss their characters with a Holocaust survivor. Irene Weiss, the author of Life at the End of the Tunnel, a memoir, will be available by phone to answer any questions actors might have, and will be attending the final performance at Theater J, says Jane Coyne, associate director.

And just to be clear, “comedy improv has nothing to do with it,” Mauro says. “Improvisation for us simply means serious acting that is done without a script,” he says. While he recognizes that The Holocaust Project is “a bit daring,” he says, “we haven’t found it to be off-putting. If people are finding it off-putting, they haven’t told us that.”

Still, says Coyne, it’s been tough to get people to sign up for the Holocaust immersion. Classes, which began March 13, are under capacity, she says, and Theatre Lab would welcome any latecomers who want to join.

We here at City Paper can never pass up a good bodily-fluid story, so we figured we’d give you advance warning on tonight’s Velvet Lounge show by controversial French performance artist Jean-Louis Costes.

Here’s how Costes describes his new act:

“Little Birds Shit” is the story of an ordinary couple. They meet…They Flirt…They Fuck…They make a baby… They fall into the normal trappings of family existence, working to make money.
– As they grow weary from the struggles of life, they find solace in acts of bizarre s&m sex.

However, this description of the act from North Dakota’s Rapid City Journal might give you a better idea of what you’re in for:

After stripping off their grubby clothes, the pair gobbled potato chips and spit them on the crowd, vomited into a filthy commode and threw around fake feces and urine before being shut down about a half hour into what was to be a 45-minute performance.

There were also plenty of “props.” The last straw, apparently, was a simulated sex act involving a carrot.

At any rate, if your idea of a chill Friday night is a cold can of Schlitz and a randy Frenchman performing vegetable-driven-buttsex on somebody, you know where to find it.

Nick Curran e-mailed to alert us to an attempt to take down the never-ending theatrical juggernaut that is the Kennedy Center’s Shear Madness. That so-called “out-of-touch” play will be replaced by a work better reflecting the real Washington, D.C., according to an open letter to Stephen Schwarzman and the KenCen Board of Trustees posted to the Web from “the Irish Felons.”

This ground-breaking new play would be Hot Tubbin’ I: Bringin’ It.

On the group’s Web site, the play’s creators admit to an uphill battle, but express confidence that once the board reviews the manuscript, “the cast and crew of Shear Madness will be notified of their dismissal immediately so that the baton may be passed to the future of Washington theater, Hot Tubbin’ I: Bringin’ It.

The group’s confidence may also be measured by the Roman numeral in the title. The follow-up is already planned: HT 2: His Majesty’s Hot Tub, “which will continue examining the dilemmas of political life through the prism of the U.S.-Saudi Arabian relationship and the awesomeness of the Doobie Brothers.”

Unlike Madness, the authors say, the appeal of Hot Tubbin’ lies in how the work “vividly portrays Washington and the agonies of modern political life.” Further, audiences “will closely identify with a muscle-bound kung-fu expert/cowboy/hot-tub engineer who looks like Lou Diamond Phillips.”

In dismissing Shear Madness, the site asks, “Where is the Washington I know? Where are the mountains of cocaine, the monster trucks, and the ferocious cowboy vs. gorilla-congressman kung-fu battles? Where the heck is the groundless conjecture about the super-secret network of pervert-coddling homosexuals that apparently is nested within the upper echelons of the Republican Party?”

Furthermore, the Felons state, Hot Tubbin’ I is “firmly rooted in the cherished traditions of American Theater,” adding, “in addition to paying considerable tribute to Eugene O’Neill, Hot Tubbin’ I has several characters who are gays.”

Interested parties may read the manuscript in four acts here.

By Owen McCafferty
Directed by Eric Lucas
Produced by the Keegan Theatre’s New Island Project
At Theatre on the Run to Feb. 3

What the child-development types like to call “unstructured play” is anything but: The games kids play, such as those the young Irish lads Mojo and Mickybo come up with to fill their days, tend to be highly ordered affairs with strict sets of rules. The identities that the two heroes of Owen McCafferty’s play adopt while evading the clutches of Belfast’s stern adults and menacing street toughs (Batman and Robin, Butch and Sundance) are sharply defined, as well-so sharply that you’ll forgive the play’s desire to say something important about What Happens When the Adult World Intrudes With Rules of Its Own. Christopher Dinolfo’s Mojo, we learn, is from “up the road.” Mike Innocenti’s Mickybo is from “over the bridge.” The play’s set in Northern Ireland in 1970. See where this is going? But while you’re steeling yourself for the message to kick in, the Keegan Theatre’s fast, funny, and energetic production will likely win you over. Dinolfo and Innocenti are playing very young boys who evince a wide-eyed understanding of the world, but they’re both disciplined actors and keep the evening sugar-free. Director Eric Lucas sends the pair caroming across Theatre on the Run’s compact stage, and they work up a sweat miming shootouts and fistfights. The play’s at its sharpest, however, when it lets Mojo and Mickybo occupy themselves with less raucous pursuits, as when they debate the relative merits of Spider-Man vs. Batman. (Spidey, they decide, would be much more useful in Belfast, because he could web up bombs to keep them from exploding. The Dark Knight, in their considered opinion, would do fuck-all.) The real treat is watching Dinolfo and Innocenti tackle the world that hovers around the boys, rotating through a diverse cast of characters that includes their respective mums and das, a dipsomaniacal war veteran, and a pair of lumbering brutes with the satisfyingly evocative names of Gank and Fuckface. Both actors have fun with this variety show, but Dinolfo is particularly deft and economical; he doesn’t so much shift into a different persona as click firmly into place. It’s a thing to see: I found myself thrilling to a particular tilt of the actor’s head, because noticing it meant knowing that Mickybo’s mother-the play’s go-to laugh-getter-was about to speak again. —Glen Weldon

Over at the Warner Theatre, they’re unhappy. Very unhappy.

On Nov. 17, the Warner Theatre announced the cancellation of The Producers: The New Mel Brooks Musical, which was supposed to run from Nov. 21 to Nov. 26. “The Thanksgiving week proved to be challenging for ticket sales,” says Barrett Newman, general manager at the theater.

“We feel awful that our audiences are deprived of the chance to see the show,” Newman says. “We feel equally awful that our staff won’t have the pre-holiday employment.”

The Warner Theatre folks feel so bad, in fact, that they’ve looped a couple of The Producers’ lyrics on their telephone line. Call the theater and you’ll hear, “Unhappy. Unhappy. Very unhappy.” And, for now, that’s the closest you’re going to get to The Producers.

There was a time, however, when The Producers seemed unstoppable. Back on Broadway, the musical broke all kinds of records for ticket sales and awards nominations. In Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mel Brooks cast Larry David in a leading role just so the juggernaut would finally flop. The show even had a successful run at the Kennedy Center a couple of summers ago. So what happened? Maybe Hitler’s springtime has faded into fall, or worse, withered away into winter. Has The Producers lost its luster at last?

Not yet, says Renee Miller, a spokesperson with Baci Management Inc., the production company handling the musical’s national tour. She calls the cancellation “D.C. specific,” and says that, to her knowledge, the show’s stint in Philadelphia last week went on without a hitch.

Meanwhile, although Warner is upset about what happened with The Producers, the theater isn’t going to sever its ties to Baci just yet. “We have a long relationship with Baci,” Newman says. “They’re a small organization that does a lot across the country.” Baci has plans to partner with Warner again in 2007 for productions of Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida and Cabaret, Miller says.

Every Thursday, we round up Pay-Whats and other cheap seats at local theaters. Just so’s your weekend is a little easier.

Before we start, remember the general rules: (A) Reservations for these? Not so much. (B) They’re offered on a space-available basis, so have a backup plan. (C) Click each theater name for details and contact info. Oh, and you might tell ‘em City Paper sent you.

The frost is on the Pay-What pumpkin, mostly ’cause there aren’t that many shows in previews right now. But this Monday night at 7, Solas Nua kicks off a new playreading series at the Savory Cafe in Takoma Park. The first show is Made in China, from Dublin writer Mark O’Rowe, whose Crestfall (at Studio Secondstage) is one of the hottest tickets in town right now; Solas Nua promises an ongoing overview of Ireland’s most interesting contemporary playwrights. Admission is free.

Washington Shakespeare Company launches its Best of the Brits reading series on Monday, too. Shrivings, the first play in the series, is by Peter Shaffer, whose Equus just opened on the WSC mainstage. (This one’s a Pay-What.) Up next: Sarah Kane’s Blasted, on Nov. 13.

And I know I’ve said this more than once, but the best deal in town right now is the always-$10-a-seat Catalyst Theater, making a zoot-suit riot out of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Bertolt Brecht’s cautionary black comedy about the Hitler-style rise of a Chicago gangster. It’s gotten rave reviews (including mine)—and it’s been extended to Nov. 11.

Otherwise, here’s what I know about:

• Bulletins from Fatland, Horizons Theatre. Caren Anton in “a darkly funny, poignant and occasionally shocking” solo piece, portraying “a female sumo wrestler, an African American pastor, an East London housewife, and a Big Easy waitress—all struggling with body image, acceptance, redemption,” and of course the dreaded F-word. Pay-What previews Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m. At Warehouse Theatre Second Stage, 1019 7th St. NW.
• Equus, Washington Shakespeare Company (regularly $25-$30). The play about the horse-fucker. (Well, sorta kinda.) Lee Mikeska Gardner directs what’s actually a major piece of 20th-century theater (by Amadeus author Peter Shaffer); it mourns the banal tyranny of the “normal,” and it involves sex, obsession, religion, and yes, a naked young man on the back of a horse. Pay-What matinees every Saturday at 2 p.m. At Clark Street Playhouse, 601 South Clark Street in Crystal City.
• Communion, Horizons Theatre. “Uses stories excavated from the back pages of the newspapers and interviews with women from all walks of life to examine the intersection of spirituality and sexuality as it lives in women’s bodies.” Pay-What preview Saturday at 7:30 p.m. At Warehouse Theatre Second Stage, 1019 7th St. NW.

Every Thursday, we round up Pay-Whats and other cheap seats at local theaters. Just so’s your weekend is a little easier.

Before we start, sing along with the general rules: (A) Reservations for these? Not so much. (B) They’re offered on a space-available basis, so have a backup plan. (C) Click each theater name for details and contact info. Oh, and you might tell ‘em City Paper sent you.

It bears repeating (for another week or two, anyway): The best deal in town right now is the always-$10-a-seat Catalyst Theater, making a zoot-suit riot out of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Bertolt Brecht’s cautionary black comedy about the Hitler-style rise of a Chicago gangster. It’s gotten rave reviews (including mine), and it’s been extended to Nov. 11.

Otherwise, here’s what I know about:

• Red Light Winter, Studio Theatre (regularly $40-$48). Adam Rapp’s “engagingly convulsive drama” (sez Mondello) “begins with a comically inept suicide attempt and evolves into a bleak if frequently laugh-provoking chronicle of romantic yearning.” Joy Zinoman directs; FREE performances tonight, Thursday, and Friday at 8 p.m. Reservation required; call 202-332-3300 and mention CuDC. At the Zinoplex, 14th and P Streets NW.
• Never the Sinner, Actors Theatre of Washington. (Regularly $31.50) John Logan’s crime-scene-and-courtroom drama about the Leopold & Loeb murder. Mondello weighs in here. Pay-What performances tonight, Thursday, and Friday at 8 p.m., plus Sunday at 7 p.m. At the Source Theatre space, 1835 14th St. NW.
• Equus, Washington Shakespeare Company (regularly $25-$30). The play about the horse-fucker. (Well, sorta kinda.) Harry Potter himself (meaning Daniel Radcliffe) stars in a flashy London revival in March; locally, and now, the accomplished Lee Mikeska Gardner directs what’s actually a major piece of 20th-century theater (by Amadeus author Peter Shaffer) involving sex, obsession, religion, and yes, a naked young man on the back of a horse. Critics see it next week. Pay-What previews this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (whoops) Monday at 8 p.m. At Clark Street Playhouse, 601 South Clark St., Arlington.
• Monster, Rorschach Theatre (regularly $21.50). Neal Bell’s adaptation got an Olney Theater production a while back; now come some of the District’s youngest, Turk-iest theatrical Young Turks with their take. Critics see it Monday; a YouTube preview is here. Pay-What previews this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 8 p.m. At Sanctuary Theatre/Casa Del Pueblo, 1459 Columbia Road NW.

Every Thursday, we round up Pay-Whats and other cheap seats at local theaters. Just so’s your weekend is a little easier.

Before we start, remember the general rules: (A) Reservations for these? Not so much. (B) They’re offered on a space-available basis, so have a backup plan. (C) Click each theater name for details and contact info. Oh, and you might tell ‘em City Paper sent you.

Warmed-over plug from last week: The best deal in town right now is the always-$10-a-seat Catalyst Theater, making a zoot-suit riot out of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Bertolt Brecht’s cautionary black comedy about the Hitler-style rise of a Chicago gangster.

Otherwise, here’s what I know about:

• Orange Flower Water, Didactic Theatre. “Romantic chaos…moral ambiguity…two couples…an extramarital affair”—yup, sounds like Six Feet Under scribe Craig Wright (whose plays Grace and Melissa Arctic had their world premieres in D.C.). I’m seeing it Sunday. Pay-What preview tonight, Thursday, at 7:30 p.m. At DCAC, 2438 18th St. NW.
• Jon Spelman’s Frankenstein, Round House Theatre. The noted storyteller/performer retells Mary Shelley’s Gothic parable from the Creature’s point of view. Critics see it next week. Pay-What preview tonight, Thursday, at 8 p.m. At Round House Silver Spring, 8641 Colesville Road.
• Never the Sinner, Actors Theatre of Washington. John Logan’s crime-scene-and-courtroom drama about the Leopold & Loeb murder. Bob Mondello liked the atmospherics of a 1997 Ethan McSweeny staging a bit better than the play itself, but I hear this one might be interestingly disturbing. Pay-What preview tonight (regularly $31.50), Thursday, at 8 p.m. At the Source Theatre space, 1835 14th St. NW.
• Spring Forward/Fall Back, Theater J. A premiere from theater titan Robert Brustein, founder of Yale Rep and longtime New Republic theater critic. From the theater: “A deeply personal new play about successive generations of fathers and sons and their continuing conflicts over music. An esteemed conductor is compelled to visit the formative stages of his life, returning to the rich, immigrant culture of an Upper West Side tenement filled with love and dissension.” Critics see it next week. Pay-What previews Sunday and Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. At the DCJCC, 16th and Q Streets NW.

Every Thursday, we round up Pay-Whats and other cheap seats at local theaters. Just so’s your weekend is a little easier.

Before we start, remember the general rules: (A) Reservations for these? Not so much. (B) They’re offered on a space-available basis, so have a backup plan. (C) Click each theater name for details and contact info. Oh, and you might tell ‘em City Paper sent you.

Remember there are (or were) $10 seats, limited availability, for the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Enemy of the People—tonight, Thursday, at 8. Offer good by phone only (at 202.547.1122, option 3; mention promotion code 3437).

Also: The local edition of the global Samuel Beckett Centenary Festival continues. If you missed the “listening party” this past Monday (they staged four of the radio plays), you can download podcasts of the Warehouse Theatre performances here—but only through Oct. 15, so get ’em now. A free festival-style screening of excerpts from the superb “Beckett on Film” collection continues through tomorrow, Friday. Meanwhile Solas Nua and Forum Theater collaborate on stagings of Rough for Theatre II and other short plays and poems at the Warehouse Second Stage this weekend; tickets are $15.

And the best deal in town right now is the always-$10-a-seat Catalyst Theatre, making a zoot-suit riot out of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Bertolt Brecht’s cautionary black comedy about the Hitler-style rise of a Chicago gangster.

Otherwise, here’s what I know about:

• The Insect Play, SCENA Theatre. He gave us the word “robot” (or maybe his brother did), not to mention a body of work that dazzled no less dazzling a figure than Arthur Miller. Here, Czech playwright Karel Čapek sets the beetles, the butterflies, and the ants to debating philosophy in a blistering satire on totalitarian politics. Critics see it next week. Pay-What previews Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m and Sunday at 3 p.m. At the Warehouse Theatre Mainstage, 1021 7th St. NW.
• iMusical, the Improvised Musical, Washington Improv Theater. Ummm, it’s improv, so your guess is as good as mine. Travis Ploeger of Chicago City Limits directs. Pay-What preview next Wed., Oct. 18, at 8 p.m. At Flashpoint, 916 G St. NW.

Every Thursday, we round up Pay-Whats and other cheap seats at local theaters. Just so’s your weekend is a little easier.

Before we start, remember the general rules: (A) Reservations for these? Not so much. (B) They’re offered on a space-available basis, so have a backup plan. (C) Click each theater name for details and contact info. Oh, and you might tell ‘em City Paper sent you.

Worth noting this week: The local edition of the global Samuel Beckett Centenary Festival. Freebies include a “listening party” next week at the Warehouse (they’ll stage four of the radio plays), plus a festival-style screening, from next Tuesday to Friday, Oct. 10–13, of excerpts from the superb “Beckett on Film” collection—from the 6-minute Catastrophe to the 84-minute Endgame.

Plus, if you haven’t gone to see Josh Lefkowitz’s show, you should. It’s great, and it’s a $15 seat—through Sunday in the rehearsal room at Woolly. Book now; it’s a small space.

And here’s a reminder we like to trot out occasionally:

• Lots of D.C. theaters offer rush seats (sometimes called stampede seats or Hottix or some other silliness) a half-hour or so before showtime. Theater J’s, for instance, are $15 on weekdays and Sundays, $20 on Saturdays, available 30 minutes before curtain if a show’s not sold out.
• Studio Theatre, I gather, is actively looking for new ushers right this minute. (See this page—and be nice to Solomon, ‘cause he’ll hook you up.)
• And remember there’s always TicketPlace, the half-price day-of-show outlet down in Penn Quarter.

Otherwise, here’s what I know about:

• The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Catalyst Theatre. Brecht’s in exile, writing about the Germany he’s just fled—but he wants the world to listen, so he sets his parable about Hitler’s rise in gangland Chicago, circa 1930. And it’s a comedy, natch—blacker than black, but a comedy nonetheless. Scot McKenzie stars; critics see it Saturday. Pay-What previews tonight, Thursday, and tomorrow, Friday, at 7:30 p.m. At Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, 545 7th St. SE.
• Enemy of the People, Shakespeare Theatre Company. Henrik Ibsen’s titanic whistle-blower drama, directed by an actual Norwegian. CP says: “The play’s a fierce attack on party politics and self-interested timidity, but it’s also a study of a terribly flawed hero … and [Kjetil] Bang-Hansen’s production focuses mercilessly on the latter.” $10 seats tonight, Oct. 5, through Oct. 12; calendar is here. Offer good by phone only: Call 202.547.1122, option 3, and mention promotion code 3437. At the Lansburgh Theatre, 450 7th St. NW.

Every Thursday, we round up Pay-Whats and other cheap seats at local theaters. Just so’s your weekend is a little easier.

Before we start, remember the general rules: (A) Reservations for these? Not so much. (B) They’re offered on a space-available basis, so have a backup plan. (C) Click each theater name for details and contact info. Oh, and you might tell ‘em City Paper sent you.

Just the one Pay-What this week, but there are plenty of cheap seats and freebies and one-offs coming up in the next few days.

Ferinstance:

• The VSA arts Playwright Discovery initiative (yup, the same program that pegged Phoebe Rusch as a startling new talent) stages the one-act by this year’s winner, 18-year-old Floridian Jonathan Mayer, at 7:30 tonight, Thursday. The play: Mistakes, Inc., which “challenges the audience to imagine what would happen if they could have their mistakes erased simply by calling a 1-800 number.” Paul-Douglas Michnewicz (who staged Theater Alliance’s luminous production of Rusch’s 3/4 of a Mass for St. Vivian) directs. Tix are free, if any are left.
• Speaking of Theater Alliance: They’re putting up another cabaret evening this Saturday at 8. Singers Joanne Schmoll, Rob McQuay, Jim Breen, and Judy Simmons are on the bill for The Women of Tin Pan Alley; tix are $15.
• Busboys & Poets, meanwhile, has booked in the Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble with a theatrical vaudeville called 10 Brecht Poems. One show Saturday at 10:30 p.m., two on Sunday, at 4 and 10:30. Tix are $12 at the door.
• Ford’s Theatre has commissioned a one-scene show about the Lincoln assassination—told from the POV of one of the three brothers who owned Ford’s on the day that gave it its extra-theatrical reputation. One Destiny opens this Monday, Oct. 2, and runs for three weeks; Stephen F. Schmidt (the Helen Hayes–winning Officer Lockstock in Signature’s Urinetown), plays Harry Ford. Seats are free for all shows, or $1 if you want to reserve in advance.
• And Journeymen Theatre is apparently offering half-price seats at all remaining performances of the well-reviewed Spinning Into Butter, which runs through Saturday. Check TicketPlace. Which, it’s worth noting, is always a good idea if you’re looking for discount seats.

As far as straight-up Pay-Whats, here’s the only one I know about:

• Stripping Don Juan, Teatro GALA. The infamous seducer gets his, courtesy of a savvy young woman who hits him where it hurts: Squarely in the macho. Written Ana Caro Mallén de Soto, one of a handful of female playwrights from Spain’s 17th-century theatrical golden age. Gala boss Hugo Medrano updates the play with a modern setting; in Spanish with English surtitles. Critics see it Saturday. Pay-What preview tonight, Thursday, at 8 p.m. At Gala Theatre-Tivoli, 14th Street and Park Road NW.

And remember: Tell ‘em City Paper sent you.