Going into the weekend, here's a brief roundup of theater news and events:
* Arnold Mittelman, the long-time producing artistic director of the (still) closed Coconut Grove Playhouse, is planning a 2012 South Florida conference under the auspices of his National Jewish Theater (NJT) Foundation. With the help of a $60,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Mittelman is putting together an invitation-only conference to advance the NJT's Holocaust Theater Archive and web site. Devoted to researching, cataloguing and encouraging the production of Holocaust-related theater, the archive has an advisory board that includes William Shulman of the Association of Holocaust Organizations, Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum, actor Theodore Bikel, theater historian Al Goldfarb and Haim Shaked of the Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies at the University of Miami.
* A low-cost theater event and a reading will bring theater lovers to GableStage and Mosaic Theatre on normally dark nights for the companies, now home to the hit productions of Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brothers Size (GableStage) and Michael Weller's Side Effects (Mosaic).
GableStage is hosting Ground Up & Rising's minimalist production of Danny Hoch's Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop starring Curtis Belz at 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday. The solo show requires a versatile actor to play a collection of marginalized guys trying to be heard. Ground Up's Arturo Fernandez directs the show, and the $7 per person admission will benefit the company and its planned productions at the new South Dade Cultural Arts Center later this season. For info, call 305-444-1119 or visit the GableStage web site. GableStage is in the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables.
The free staged reading at Mosaic happens at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the company's black box theater at the American Heritage Center for the Arts, 12200 W. Broward Blvd., Bldg. 3000, Plantation. Edward Castle's A Bouquet for Raven Poe (yes, about Edgar Allan Poe) features Michael St. Pierre, Shelby Steel, Scott Genn, Danielle Tabino, Daniel Nieves and Oscar Cheda. Call 954-577-8243 or visit Mosaic's web site for info.
* If you're a fan of Caryl Churchill's plays, you're in luck: Florida Atlantic University's theater department is presenting Cloud 9from tonight through Oct. 2. The time-traveling, gender-bending, smart script will be presented at the Studio One Theatre on FAU's main campus, 777 Glades Rd., Boca Raton. Performances are 7 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 1 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Admission is $20 ($12 for FAU students; $16 for faculty, staff and alumni). Call 1-800-564-9539 or visit the FAU Events site for tickets.
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