Mary Rohde Scudday brings us back to the beauty shop in Ladybug Ladybug.

As Joni Mitchell sings it, "sometimes you don't know what you've got till it's gone." That's sort of the story of what happened to the play Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly Away Home, written by Texas actress and playwright Mary Rohde Scudday in the 1970s, when she was 24, and produced back then at the Dallas Theater Center (twice) and then at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

The play returns with most of its original cast - including Cheryl Denson, Elly Lindsay, Michael Scudday, Nancy Smith Munger, Pam Hoffmann, Beverly Renquist Barry and Paul Munger, directed once again by Chris Hendrie - onstage at Kalita Humphreys Theater at 7 p.m., Monday, April 30, for a reunion and staged reading as part of the Preston and Mary Sue Jones Play Reading Series produced by Trey Birkhead. The event is a fundraiser for the Dallas Theater Center Guild.

Set in a small-town Texas beauty shop, Ladybug received rave reviews when it premiered at DTC's downstairs space (no longer in use) in 1978. It moved to the main stage two years later and was a huge success. "Long before Steel Magnolias hit the scene [and] since overshadowed by that wash-and-set weeper, Ladybug proves the better play," wrote critic Tom Sime later in the Dallas Morning News.

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From Coyote

With its second festival of new plays starting Thursday, Nouveau 47 can now call it an "annual" event. The theater company in Margo Jones' old space at the Magnolia Lounge, Fair Park, regards their outfit as a "gym for playwrights," with special focus on developing and polishing scripts for production on their stage and elsewhere. Last year's new works festival brought success to several writers, including Kevin Kautzman for his play Coyote, which had a dandy run at Nouveau earlier this year. Kautzman returns this year with If You Start a Fire [Be Prepared to Burn]. The 2011 fest also generated a book deal for another writer and brought interest from beyond DFW for several scripts.

The 2012 New Works Festival runs April 26-May 6, bringing playwrights from all over the country to Dallas to hear their work performed in staged readings and to receive feedback from audiences and panels of critics, directors and educators. Scripts were selected from more than 200 submissions, says festival director Lacy Lalene Lynch.

"Connecting" is the theme of this year's fest. "All of the work explores the act of exchanging in an age of technology, sobriety, social lubricants, stoners, sexting, web cams, sci-fi, and our fracked-up families," says Lynch.

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Those who were in the audience that night in October 2005 remember it well. The national tour of Wicked had hit the Music Hall at Fair Park for the first time and it was a sold-out opening. A huge Broadway smash (it's still playing to capacity crowds in New York), the musical prequel to the Wizard of Oz pits two young witches, good witch Glinda and green-hued Elphaba, against each other in a classic good v. evil confrontation. The girls eventually become friends, with Glinda, played here on that tour by Kendra Kassebaum, giving Elphaba, played by Stephanie J. Block, the confidence to seek help for her "condition" from the Wiz himself.

The 11 o'clock number in this show actually comes at the end of the first act, the soaring anthem "Defying Gravity." As Block tore into the song that night, it was clear something special was happening. The song climaxes with Elphaba, belting bigger and bigger notes, rising from the stage floor with her long witch's robe fluttering behind her. As Block sang, the audience started to react, clapping, whooping, whistling their approval of her kickass performance. By her last notes of "Defying Gravity," one of those goose-pimple producing song-gasms too rare in musicals right now, people were on their feet, many in tears (I was). It was the first time I'd ever seen a standing ovation at any show before intermission.

That moment and Stephanie J. Block's performance in Wicked are still talked about by Dallas theatergoers (and a few critics) with awe and reverence. She hasn't been back here since then until this week, when she joins an all-star cast Friday, March 23, for the one-night concert Do You Hear the People Sing at the American Airlines Center. More about the show and a phone chat with still-riveting Ms. Block after the jump.

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Eric Steeele takes you into corporate America in Midwest Trilogy.

Eric Steele is a busy young Dallas playwright and screenwriter who thinks theater and film aren't mutually exclusive art forms. With his show The Midwest Trilogy, now playing through April 7 at Second Thought Theatre, he's combined two films and one live actor into a single 90-minute production.

Just off his daily bike ride around White Rock Lake, Steele, one of the owners of Oak Cliff's Texas Theatre, was up for talking about the trilogy, which includes short films called Cork's Cattlebaron and Topeka, and a live one-man play titled - get ready - Bob Birdnow's Remarkable Tale of Human Survival and the Transcendence of Self.

Steele says the pieces were inspired by his experiences over two years of traveling the Midwest on business for a technology research company. Things are not good out there, he says. The recession is taking a toll and hate-spewing groups like the Westboro Baptist bunch are gaining a following. Here's Steele, talking about the show, his admiration for its star, Dallas actor Barry Nash, and how he found inspiration in the isolation of corporate travel:

"The Midwest Trilogy is about the heartland of corporate America, not Wall Street. It's about three separate but linked towns, three different people who are tragic characters in corporate America. And specifically one instance in their world and their lives that is their moment of catharsis.

"The idea to combine film and live theater was presented to me by Second Thought Theatre. Steven Walters [founder and artistic director of Second Thought] had said he'd loved Bob Birdnow [performed at last summer's Festival of Independent Theatres]. But Steve felt that not enough people in the theater community had had a chance to see it. He was aware that I had written two correlating pieces. His idea was to have these three presented as one evening.

"The way the evening works is, we've set up the Bryant Hall stage as a hotel convention center in the Midwest. You have name tags and coffee in Styrofoam cups and bad cookies. There's a projector in the middle of the room. When the lights go out, there's a narration, the voice of the boss. The experience begins from there. The film part of the night is presented as instructional videos. The final piece is Bob emerging as the motivational speaker.

"This is a co-production between Second Thought and the Texas Theatre. Our idea with this is to make it more of a psychological effect on the audience. As though when you go to a sales conference, when you're watching a video or a PowerPoint, you know there won't be any surprises. And then have that shift with a live body coming in, where anything can happen. I think it's really interesting. I think we're going to see more of that kind of stuff.

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Congratulations Michael Martinez! You get to see One Man Lord of the Rings on Sunday, compliments of WaterTower Theatre's Loop Festival.

The festival kicks off tomorrow and tickets are still available for some of Mr. Ross' performances; get them here. For a breakdown of other cool Loop plays, check this out.

Thanks for playing and check back soon!

xoxo, Mixmaster

I was starting to feel like Out of the Loop Fringe Festival would never arrive. The ten day, highly experimental outsider theater festival has been sitting on the timeline's horizon; I nearly constructed an advent calendar to make the waiting more bearable. Starting tomorrow, theater-goers will pour into WaterTower's multiple stages by the hundreds to absorb as much off-kilter talent as possible.

With 20 different acts jockeying for your affection, we thought we'd lend a hand and guide you with a short list of must-see productions.

1.) One Man Lord Of The Rings
You, too, shall pass over to the Main Stage for headliner Charles Ross. He's gone and squished up all three Rings films -- complete with characters, sound effects and theme music -- into a 70 minute production. Is he a schizophrenic? Nope, he's just awesome. Ross did the same thing with Star Wars at Loop in 2009, causing everyone in the audience's light sabers to collectively activate.

We have a free pair of tickets for Ross' Sunday afternoon show available until 3 p.m. today (Wednesday, March 1st), so act fast and hit this link to enter the contest.

Read our full Q&A with Charles Ross here.

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Jeremy LeBlanc is all chicken.

The kids in the sweet, funny new play The Chicken Who Wasn't Chicken, running in Plano through Sunday, February 26, don't know how lucky they are. The script is a new one from Matt Lyle, a former Dallas writer and actor who went on to Second City's writing program in Chicago a few years ago and who now hosts the podcast variety show The City Life Supplement. The play's director is Jeff Swearingen, a gifted comedic actor who starred in two of Lyle's best plays,The Boxer and Hello Human Female. Swearingen now puts on shows with and for kids at Fun House Theatre and Film in Plano, where the chicken play premiered last night.

The kids are lucky because it's evident in their unself-conscious performances and snappy comic timing that they trust their director and understand how to deliver Lyle's fresh, off-kilter comedy. It's an all-youth cast and every young actor on the tiny stage at the Plano Children's Theatre space, even the tiniest chick in the yolk-yellow leotard, hits the punchlines like an old pro. They know how to pull off double-takes. They hold for laughs and don't step on each other's dialogue. That takes a lot of work and focus.

Lyle's plays are all heart and Chicken boils down to a simple love story complicated by a couple of baddies. Mike Chicken (Jeremy LeBlanc) is a video clerk and film buff who recommends his favorite movies, like the romantic A Coop with a View, to his customers. Mike has set his beak for pretty Polly (Kennedy Waterman) but he's too shy to tell her how he feels. Enter two bullies, a pig named Biff (Dalton Walker) and a frog named Ribbit (Jack Waterman), who taunt and tease Mike, trying to leave egg on his face. Mike's boss, Mr. Goat (Madeleine Norton), is no help as defense; he's an old goat who doesn't like to butt in.

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Wave "hello."

In his new solo show Beyond Words, Bill Bowers combines mime, music and text to tell stories from his life growing up in Montana. He also shares some stories from other lives, including one about a small-town boy from Sherwood Anderson's short fiction collection Winesburg, Ohio.

Beyond Words is one of the mainstage shows at this year's Out of the Loop Fringe Festival, playing at Addison's WaterTower Theatre March 1-11. (Dallas Observer is a sponsor of the event.)

This will be Bowers' third appearance at Out of the Loop. His 2008 Loop show, It Goes without Saying, won the DFW Critics Forum award as best touring production that year. Beyond Words was a hit with critics and audiences during its run Off Broadway last fall.

With The Artist vying for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards, we wanted to know what Bowers, a student of the great Marcel Marceau and one of a handful of professional mimes still performing solo stage shows, thought of the new semi-silent film. One thing about mimes: Out of the white makeup, they're keen to converse.

Did you like The Artist? And are you surprised that a silent movie is such a hit?
Bill Bowers: I did enjoy it very much. I had hesitation because I'm such a fan of silent film. Charlie Chaplin is my idol. But it really won me over. They do a lovely job in the film communicating a story without words. That actor [Jean Dujardin] is so charismatic, he transcends language. As a mime, it encourages me to know that it's possible to carry a two-hour film without any words.

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Jesse Hughey

Our master of ceremonies on ye olde headset mic

While I had a great time at Medieval Times celebrating my 13th birthday more than 20 years ago, and again celebrating my son's 10th last weekend, I now understand why my parents took me there exactly once as a child. There was a specific moment that drove home the realization that this was not going to become an annual birthday tradition. My wife asked some wench or squire if the "Lord Chancellor," a sort of olde-time royal hype man, could announce Lyle's birthday.

"Sure. That'll be $10.83."

That's not the price during the show, mind you, but afterward, while guests are filing out of the castle or milling about looking at $250 replica swords. She passed. Yeah, the place is a fun place to have a party, but it extracts money from customers with all the grim efficiency of a breast ripper or head crusher coercing information or confession from victims. Those two implements of agony, along with dozens of others, are on display for your pre-meal enjoyment in the Torture Museum, a walk through which costs an extra $2.

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It may never win a Tony but Bring It On: The Musical deserves a solid gold spirit stick for mixing the dynamic moves of those cheerleading competitions on ESPN with the happy-peppy singing and dancing by the kids on Glee. The national tour of the show, only loosely based on the movie starring Kirsten Dunst, opened last night at the Music Hall at Fair Park, where it plays through February 26.

The production started at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre a couple of years ago. It's a team effort by solid young Broadway show-makers, with libretto by Avenue Q Tony winner Jeff Whitty; music by Tom Kitt (Next to Normal) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights); lyrics by Amanda Green and Miranda. Andy Blankenbuehler, currently Broadway's hottest director-choreographer, incorporates the high-flying gymnastics of competitive cheerleading (half the dancers have backgrounds in big-time college cheerleading) with the sharp angles and smooth grooves of hip-hop. This show moves, baby. It stacks hot bodies up in three-level pyramids then flips them up and over their pretty young heads.

About the only thing the musical shares with the movie (and its straight-to-video sequels) is the "us against them" cheerleading squads. Head cheer-tator Campbell (beautiful big-voiced blond Taylor Louderman) has to start over again when redistricting moves her from wealthy white Truman High to urban, cheer-squad-free Jackson High. How she makes friends with a crew of hip-hop dancers and convinces them to become a winning team of cheerleaders going to a national competish is the basic plot - as thin as the white line cheerleaders shouldn't cross on the floor at the big contest.

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