Ellicott City's Alexander Design Studio will design revisions to the exterior, the lobby, the box office and the concessions area for Baltimore's CENTERSTAGE under a project that is part of the theater's "Smart/Bold/Alive Identity Campaign." The firm, led by Charles W. Alexander, has won numerous American Institute of Architects awards in the Baltimore area for designs of residences, churches and schools. The project is to provide an updated visual impact for patrons as well as to remake the image of the theater complex on North Calvert Street.

For the second summer in a row, interns from the Library of Congress' Copyright Office have scoured the non-book holdings of the Library from the copyright registration and deposit system that was in effect in the second half of the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth century, in which one or two copies of an item had to be sent to the Library in order to secure a copyright. This year there have been a few theater-related items unearthed including a 1916 script of a musical titled See America First by Cole Porter and his Yale classmate, T. Lawrason Riggs, which was Porter's first flop on Broadway (it received just 15 performances), and an 1870 theater program from Edwin Booth's theater in New York. Over a hundred items that had never been catalogued have been identified and will now be available to researchers.

Having now completed its new Mainstage facility, The Olney Theatre Center for the Arts has moved to the next level - paving the parking lot. Grants from the State of Maryland and Montgomery County will allow the paving of the large parking lot where parking has always been free, and a new fund has been set up to maintain the pavement. Major gifts to that "Parking Lot Sustainer Fund" will allow donors to have a reserved parking space on the evenings they have tickets to shows. The pavement is to be in place by this winter.

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has awarded the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center one of three grants to US universities for programs that integrate performing arts events with academics. The grant is for $1,125,000 and covers three years. Universities in Illinois and Michigan also received grants.

Ellen Cribbs, Manassas, Virginia playwright, former Cappies Award winning critic and current undergraduate student at New York's Ithaca College is headed to the Fringe Festival: not the one here in Washington but the big one - the original Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. She submitted her short play Voices in the Dark, which was her senior directing project at Ithica, to both the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh and the one in New York City. It was accepted at both but they run at the same time so she had to make a choice. She, and her cast from Ithaca, decided on Scotland where the original Fringe Festival now hosts nearly 2,000 shows for performance during August. The team will also perform her other short piece, Seven Points for 'Love' which received its world premiere at the Prince William Little Theatre in Manassas in 2001, and which won the NVTA (formerly the Northern Virginia Theatre Alliance) One-Act Play festival that year. That company, the Prince William Little Theatre, is serving as receiver for donations to help defray the $28,000 cost of taking the shows to Scotland. Checks can be mailed to Prince William Little Theatre, PO Box 341, Manassas VA 20108-0341.

The Washington Shakespeare Company wraps up its series of staged readings of classic Greek plays with Euripides' The Recognition of Ion under the direction of Gaurav Gopalan. Billed as "the first family romance in the western cannon" the play deals with an orphan's search for his origins. The performance begins at 8 pm. No reservations are required.

The annual "Garage Sale" at Studio Theatre will be held tomorrow . The sale will include furniture as well as show posters, some electronic items and an assortment of props from the 2005-06 season's plays. The event begins at 10 am and continues until 4 pm at Studio Theatre at 14th and P Streets, NW.

The New Play series of Arena Stage is joining with the Department of Theatre Arts at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. A two week workshop for playwright Tim Acito's musical The Women of Brewster Place began last week and will culminate with a staged reading tonight in the Studio Theater in the Squires Student Center on the campus in Blacksburg. Ten student-interns from the college are working with Acito and ten equity actors on the project. The performance begins at 7:30 this evening. It is open to the public and no reservations are required.

The Potomac Region's professional theater dedicated exclusively to developing new plays, Charter Theatre, which has performed in the basement theater at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts on Wisconsin Avenue NW, will perform its 2006-07 three-show season in Arlington's Theatre on the Run as a result of its receipt of a grant from the Arlington Commission for the Arts and its induction into the Arts Incubator program of Arlington County's Cultural Affairs Division. Arlington has developed a strong reputation for support for the arts, particularly for theater. The county owns and operates the Clark Street Playhouse, Gunston I and II, Theatre on the Run, The Rosslyn Spectrum and The Thomas Jefferson Theatre, and is the host for Signature Theatre's new venue in Shirlington. When Signature vacates its current space, the county will take it over and convert it for additional performance spaces. Wendy Rahm, Chair of the Arlington Commission for the Arts said the commission looks forward to Charter presenting "an exciting season of new productions to Arlington County residents." Among those new productions are a play be Renee Calarco which will be directed by her brother Joe Calarco, and Christopher Lane starring in a new play by Chris Stezin.

As readers of the free weekly email Potomac Stages Update already know, Potomac Stages will be on hiatus for the next two weeks while the staff takes a vacation. All the reviews, schedules and other information on the Potomac Stages website will remain available throughout this time, but no new news articles and no new reviews will be posted. Check back here starting on the 18th for the resumption of the most comprehensive coverage of the Potomac Region's incredibly vibrant theatre community.

Assassins Named Ushers Favorite Show Of June

The theater enthusiasts who usher in the region's theaters and participate in Potomac Stages Ushers' Favorite Show Award program have named Signature Theatre's production of Assassins their favorite among all the shows they saw in June. This is the second time that Signature has produced Assassins. The first one, directed by Eric Schaeffer, won the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Musical of 1993. This new production, directed by Joe Calarco, has been playing to sold out houses, and has been extended through July 30. At the end of the year, the participating Ushers will be asked to chose from among the monthly winners to name a favorite show of the year. To be eligible to participate in the Ushers' Favorite Show Award program, a theater lover must regularly volunteer at live theater events and also regularly see shows at a number of theaters. To sign up to be an Ushers Judge, send an email message to Ushers@PotomacStages.com.