Drama Queen

Kids and a flying car

The most spectacular part of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, audiences and critics alike have agreed, is the musical's wondrous flying car.  But just staring at a flying car for a couple of hours wouldn't be very interesting, now, would it?  It takes people to make this or any musical fly.

To that end, the Broadway Across America folks are holding Fort Lauderdale auditions for six children ages 8 to 12 to appear in the road company of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when the show touches down at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts Nov. 18-30.  There's no pay, but the chosen kids get professional experience.

Auditions are in the Broward Center's Abdo New River Room at 10 a.m. Sept. 28.  Each child, accompanied by a parent or guardian, should show up by 9:45 a.m. ready to sing 16 bars of an up tempo song a cappella.  Auditioners will also need to learn and perform simple choreography.  Six kids and two alternates will be picked to play orphans in Act Two.  Break a leg (but not literally).

Seated in a wheelchair, an actor inspires

Art Metrano is a funny, funny man.  If you saw him perform Metrano's Accidental Comedy at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in 2001-- or as Lt. Mauser in the Police Academy movies, or as the goofy "Amazing Metrano" on the Johnny Carson-era Tonight Show -- you already know that Metrano knows his way around a joke.

But as a performer-playwright, Metrano can also make you cry.  He stirs both laughter and tears in his retitled Art Metrano's Jews Don't Belong on Ladders...An Accidental Comedy, a play in which he tells the story of just why he has spent most of his waking hours over the past 19 years in a wheelchair.

In conjunction with the Kennedy Center's Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability Conference now at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Metrano is performing his show at the Amaturo Theater tonight through Sunday.  Performances are 8 p.m. tonight-Saturday, 2 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.  Tickets are $25 and $35.  Tonight's opening performance will also be signed, close-captioned and performed with audio description.

For information and tickets, call 954-462-0222 or visit the center's web site.