Music to All Ears

At the moment, he is back at Theater Alliance as guest director of "Ambition Facing West," Anthony Clarvoe's saga about a family pursuing its dreams ever westward, from Croatia circa 1910 to Wyoming in the '40s and Japan in the '80s. After day-long rehearsals at H Street Playhouse, where the show will run Friday through Nov. 4, Skidmore zips over to College Park to stage a University of Maryland student production of Friedrich Duerrenmatt's "The Physicists" (Nov. 1-11).

Later this season he will stage David Hare's transcript-based drama about the Iraq War, "Stuff Happens," at Olney Theatre Center and will be the assistant director to Aaron Posner for "Macbeth" at the Folger.

The 30-year-old Skidmore sees his challenge in directing Clarvoe's intimate, poetical 1997 play as finding the clarity within its intricate story. The narrative often loops back on itself and sometimes characters from all three eras are onstage simultaneously, their dialogue overlapping.

Clarvoe's script, says Skidmore, has no "huge, major pyrotechnic plot devices. It's purely people-based and conversation-based. When you're directing it, every single moment has to be completely clear, simple and honest. . . . It's completely reliant on complicated human interaction."

Skidmore has previously told Backstage of his fondness for nonlinear narratives that offer opportunities for highly visual, movement-based theatrics -- "things that make plays uniquely theater, that would never work as film." But now that he's a director for hire, "people are asking me to do things, rather than me picking them all myself. So it's diversifying the work I'm doing."

Follow Spots

¿ Citing scheduling conflicts, Keegan Theatre is replacing David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross" as its fall show, even though the company is now touring it in Ireland. The possibility of a national tour based on the 2005 Broadway revival means the small Keegan troupe has lost the rights to do the play locally for the time being, says Jeremy Skidmore, who directed. The company will instead reprise last season's "Mojo Mickybo" by Owen McCafferty Nov. 15-Dec. 1 at Church Street Theater.

¿ Film actress Karen Black ("Five Easy Pieces," "The Great Gatsby," "Nashville") will kick off Ganymede Arts' fall festival with the premiere of her one-woman show, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Sing the Song," Oct. 19 at Church Street Theater. The festival, which runs through Oct. 28, will include play readings, choral music and dance. Visit http://www.ganymedearts.org.