The Cincinnati Entertainment Awards (CEAs) for theater, set to be handed out Aug. 30, led me to wonder if our theater scene compares favorably with other cities. Would this year's 100 CEA nominees compete with performers and productions elsewhere? Those are subjective judgments, to be sure, but simply counting productions of important plays we match up reasonably well.   

Voting closed on Aug. 3 for the 13th annual Cincinnati Entertainment Awards (CEAs) recognizing outstanding performances and productions from the 2008-09 theater season. The awards will be presented at Below Zero Lounge in Over-the-Rhine on Aug. 30. The event is open to the public and free, a big party (cash bar) attended by local theater performers, directors, designers and fans celebrating the work of 100 nominees. Here's an early bird alert: Several CEA-nominated actors are returning to local stages this fall.  

So it's "hail and farewell" to Alan Patrick Kenny and New Stage Collective. With eight performances of Stephen Sondheim's and Hugh Wheeler's 'A Little Night Music' (presented at Know Theater), NSC completes its seventh and final season of always ambitious, often audacious playmaking.  

Alan Patrick Kenny did not find it easy earlier this month to discuss how New Stage Collective's production of Stephen Sondheim's 'A Little Night Music' would be the company’s final production. He said, "I did everything I could to avoid it." After seven seasons, NSC and its ambitious co-founder have succumbed to a lack of funding.  

There's a twisted thread running through human nature that too often revels in persecuting people who are different. A thread in the spirit of some that necessarily answers this tendency, one that might be bent but not broken despite vile treatment, often counters it. That's the focus of Martin Sherman's 30-year-old play 'Bent,' getting its first-ever professional Cincinnati production by New Stage Collective.  

The neighborhood's professional theater companies (Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, Know Theatre of Cincinnati and New Stage Collective) had a thrilling year artistically in 2008. They offered shows that spoke to issues of the day, and they brought tens of thousands of visitors to Over-the-Rhine, most of them the young professional types city leaders seem to covet. For their track record of serving Over-the-Rhine, their dedication to thought-provoking artistic work and their perseverance in face of economic difficulties and general apathy from the powers-that-be, CityBeat names Know's Jason Bruffy, New Stage's Alan Patrick Kenny of Collective and ETC's Lynn Meyers our 2008 Persons of the Year.  

Big stories in the news — events like 9/11 and the Iraq War — have been the focus of many plays and films during the past several years. They are points of reference in Dying City, a 2007 play by Christopher Shinn that portrays the effects of such world-changing events in the context of a small but powerful personal drama. New Stage Collective is giving the play its local premiere, the first work by Shinn presented on a Cincinnati stage. His provocative script and this strong production will warm up the January theater scene.  

It's a New Year, a time typically full of hope and new beginnings, including our local theater scene. The economic downturn, however, is having an effect.  

As an anti-traditional, anti-sentimental entertainment, New Stage Collective's 'Striking 12' zips right along. At least it does when the six singer-musicians are making, as they do, some fine and fascinating music. When they set their hands to acting the meager semi-script, the show proves something less than zippy.  

This is an intellectual vaudeville that uses some songs, lots of supporting music, even a casual dance or two to augment its witty examination of serious ideas. So "The History Boys" is right up director Alan Patrick Kenny’s alley. And what a scampering pleasure he makes of it, raucous scene after raucous scene, right up to a powerful closing moment when the boys turn “Bye, Bye Blackbird” into a singularly appropriate dirge.