Curtain Up at Community Theaters

Variety Is the Spice That Local Troupes Use to Bring In Audiences

The community theater season opens this month, alive with the sounds of music, laughter and intellectual discourse, from the hills of Austria to a place with the dubious name of Urinetown.

Each weekend this fall and into the summer, troupes will hope to lure local audiences away from multiplexes and big-screen televisions with plays chosen from a variety of assumptions about what might appeal to them.

The play selection committee of Silver Spring Stage chose eight shows this season related to the theme of self-discovery, said Bridget Muehlberger, committee chairwoman. Its repertoire opens tomorrow with "Dinner With Friends," a drama that "centers around the crumbling of a couple's marriage and the effect it has on a group of their friends," Muehlberger said.

Muehlberger will direct the company's spring play, "Columbinus," opening in April, about the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado.

"Columbinus" doesn't attempt to re-create the violent events that horrified the nation, Muehlberger said. "Instead, it examines pressures on the students involved," she said.

"What impressed me was that the playwright went out to Colorado and interviewed students, teachers and law enforcement officials to get a perspective on how such a thing could happen," she said.

The venerable Montgomery Playhouse followed a less thematic approach to choosing its seven offerings this season.

The 79-year-old company, which helped launch the acting careers of Goldie Hawn in the 1960s and George Grizzard in the 1940s, is also mounting a production of "Dinner With Friends." In contrast, its season opened last weekend with the zany "I Hate Hamlet," by Paul Rudnick.

"When we go out looking for plays to do, we want to do a variety of things," theater spokesperson Kay Coupe said. "We have an audience following that likes more familiar shows, but we try to see if we can find a mix to attract new people from the community."

"I Hate Hamlet" is a 1990 comedy about an actor who moves into an apartment haunted by the obstreperous ghost of actor John Barrymore. It runs through Oct. 5.

Other offerings include a comedy by the late Wendy Wasserstein in November, a weekend holiday fundraising show in December, "Dinner With Friends" in January and, in February, "Almost Maine," a new play about love relationships.

Cedar Lane Stage in Bethesda tends to look for plays with an intellectual and emotional punch.