Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati, sporting a slightly abbreviated name and a half-painted façade, today announced most of its 2012-2013 season. As usual at ETC, it’s a work in progress: That how things are when you’re on the cutting edge of contemporary theater. But Artistic Director D. Lynn Meyers knows how to juggle lots of moving parts, and that includes a nod to another local theater great: She’s engaged Ed Stern, about to retire from his 20-year tenure as artistic director at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, to stage a show that will feature the city’s most respected professional actor, Dale Hodges. Meyers has also designated five shows (the season will have six, one is still to be determined) for her schedule.

Meyers says, “Next season promises to be a selection of smart, contemporary, and compelling theater. The ETC experience is unique and intimate, unlike anything you’ll see anywhere else, along with the excellence you’ve come to expect.” She points out that the season features several strong female voices, too.

In 2007, ETC presented Rabbit Hole by Pulitzer Prize-winner David Lindsay-Abaire. He’ll be back for the theater’s 27^th season with a humor-laced drama Good People (Sept. 5-23). The recent script (its Broadway production was a Tony nominee a year ago) explores the struggles, shifting loyalties and unshakeable hopes that come with having next to nothing in America. It focuses on a woman unable to catch a break who flees from urban Boston to the suburbs, where she’s totally out of her element. It’s a look at the haves and the have-nots, the kind of tale that Meyers loves to present to ETC audiences.

Up next will be Ed Stern’s production of Jeffrey Hatcher’s irreverent but poignant comedy Mrs. Mannerly (Oct. 10-28). Dale Hodges will play a demanding etiquette teacher in 1967; she’s bedeviled by a boy trying pulling out all the stops to get a perfect score, an unprecedented feat. The boy’s name Jeffrey Hatcher, so he bears a close resemblance to the playwright. (Amusingly, we are warned that this play about proper behavior contains strong language.)

For the holidays, ETC will reprise one of its family-friendly musicals: Alice in Wonderland (Nov. 28-Dec. 30) by playwright Joseph McDonough and composer-lyricist David Kisor.

Meyers is still angling for the show she’ll present in late January.

It will be followed by the regional premiere of Frank Higgins’ Black Pearl Sings! (March 13-31, 2013). I saw a production of this show in Sarasota in 2008, and I’m convinced it’s the kind of play that ETC audiences warm to, similar to this season’s The Whipping Man. It’s set during the Great Depression focusing on a researcher collecting traditional music for the Library of Congress. She finds Pearl Johnson in a Texas prison, a woman with a head and heart full of spiritual songs and a voice to perform them. Black Pearl Sings! is about being a woman in a man’s world, being black in a white world and fighting for one’s soul in a world where anyone can be a commodity.

ETC’s season will end on a familiar and definitely lighter note with another sequel to the best-selling production from 2009, The Marvelous Wonderettes. This time it’s The Marvelous Wonderettes: Caps and Gowns (May 1-19, 2013). We return to 1958 at Springfield High School for graduation and high hopes including a gymnasium full of pop tunes from the era — “River Deep, Mountain High,” “Dedicated to the One I Love,” “Rockin’ Robin.”

Subscriptions are already on sale ($156-$186); you can purchase a FlexPass ($196), which gives you six flexible tickets to use for any show and in any combination. Single tickets for season go on sale to the general public on August 13, 2012.

I recently spent three days in Louisville at the 34th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. Actors Theatre of Louisville annually assembles a lineup of productions that offers a fascinating cross-section of contemporary American theater.

I found this year’s array to be an especially pleasing collection of works: It included two excellent comedies, a thoughtful drama, two experimental performance pieces from creative ensembles and an inventive piece to showcase interns (and a Louisville hotel/museum showplace). A bill of 10-minute plays was clever and creative, and only a musical play was a disappointment.

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It was sad news to hear that Thom Shaw, a well-known local printmaker and artist, passed away July 6 from complications due to diabetes. Unfortunately, I heard the news too late to write something in time for the memorial service that took place July 17.

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Don’t go looking for Boris Karloff or any kind of campy make-up if you decide to see the National Theatre of London’s production of Frankenstein on Tuesday or Wednesday evening at The Carnegie in Covington. This version, provided via HD digital transmission, is much more faithful to Mary Godwin’s creepy and profound Gothic novel written in the summer of 1816. When it was finally published two years later (by which time she had married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and become Mary Shelley), few people believed it could have been written by a young woman not yet 20 years old.

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Since the 2011 Cincinnati Fringe Festival kicked off on June 1, a panel of three dedicated theater experts have been evaluating performances for recognition through the Acclaim Awards. These awards are in the process of being renamed, but for the sake of clarity and brevity, I’m going to call them by their soon-to-be-former name. The panelists are veterans of the Acclaims; neither Jackie Demaline of The Cincinnati Enquirer nor I are members of the panel or involved in this process.

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Since the Covedale Center for the Performing Arts opened back in 2002, it’s become the go-to place for onstage entertainment on the West Side, including the summertime Cincinnati Young People’s Theatre, which provides theater opportunities for high school kids from across the city. The facility is owned and operated by Cincinnati Landmark Productions (CLP), recently inducted into the Cincinnati Entertainment Awards Hall of Fame on Aug. 30. CLP also operates the Showboat Majestic. 

The Covedale Center has been a busy place, but the converted 1940s movie house had minimal backstage space — until now. After several years of tight quarters, no running water or bathrooms, the facility has been renovated and expanded: There is now a rehearsal studio, a green room, two dressing rooms, shop space and two handicapped-accessible bathrooms. This evening marks the grand opening of the addition with a reception for VIPs and local media.

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This past Saturday (Aug. 15) marked this year’s one-night-only installment of ballet tech cincinnati’s annual Gala of International Dance Stars at the Aronoff Center.

It was a night of connections. Connections are necessary for any performance worth its salt—both with the audience and amongst the performers. But when it comes to dance, connectivity arguably becomes even more central to success and enjoyment.

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So it's almost Thanksgiving and you need to find some good theater before you can begin working on all the preparations for the big meal later next week. My recommendation — Evita at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. Aubrey Berg, who has headed the musical theater training program at the University of Cincinnati for 24 years, directs the show about Eva Duarte Peron's rise to fame and power in Argentina and subsequent fall from grace (she died from cancer at 33).

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I think there are few more satisfying segments of musical theater than the opening 10 minutes of the musical Chicago, which is in town for a brief run at the Aronoff Center. The first number, “All That Jazz,” gives you an encyclopedia of the stylistic dance moves of iconic choreographer Bob Fosse, followed by “Funny Honey,” an introduction of Roxie Hart, who murders her low-life lover. A few minutes later, “Cell Block Tango” provides the set-up for the colorful women who are in prison for their acts of violence. The touring production stars Terra MacLeod as Velma Kelly and Bianca Marroquin as Roxie Hart (the roles played by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger in the Academy Award-winning film) and they dance and sing with the requisite zest. Chicago opens with a quick speech defining it as containing “violence, exploitation, adultery and treachery — all the things we hold near and dear to our hearts.” If you’re looking for a stylish musical with nary a whiff of the holidays, this is the show to see this weekend. It runs through Sunday. Tickets: 800-982-2787.

Taft Museum of Art has named its new director/CEO to replace Eric Lee, who left in the spring to head the Kimbal Art Museum in Fort Worth. She is Deborah Emont Scott, recently chief curator at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City and before that the museum's Sanders Sosland curator of 20th Century. She becomes the sixth director in the Taft's 77-year-history.

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