They are different, those singing Callaway sisters.
Yes, both live in Croton-on-Hudson and have Broadway credits, exceptional voices and cabaret followings.
But Ann Hampton Callaway, the family’s scat-singing piano player, has dark hair and is a bit nervy. Her kid sister, Liz Callaway, is fair-haired and more soft-spoken.
If Liz is a vodka martini, Ann is a Maker’s Mark Manhattan, and make it a double.
Yet both will be performing July 19 at “Divas 2008,” a benefit for the excellent Hudson Stage Company, which was co-founded by Liz’s husband, Dan Foster.
The event, at an estate in Yorktown Heights, will feature other “divas,” to be named later, but the Callaway sisters are legacies of sorts, the go-to divas for Hudson Stage.
Ann, the brassier Callaway, says the title might be misleading.
“I can’t believe my sister agreed to do this event,” she says, “because she’s always said: ‘You can call yourself a diva, but I will always be the anti-diva.’ If they really wanted to be honest, they’d call it ‘Divas — and the Anti-Diva.’
“It’s not a word you use lightly,” Ann says. “You need to live up to the word. You need to be difficult, demanding, high-maintenance. I remember first hearing Jenifer Lewis use it repeatedly in one of her club acts. I thought it was so funny because, to me, it made fun of those self-important performers.
“I started using it because I thought it was so cheeky. Using the word makes me feel braver to say outrageous things to my audience. But I like to think I’m the friendly diva, because it does scare a lot of people.
“My favorite diva story is Kathleen Battle, who called her agent in New York to tell her driver in the limousine to please turn down the air-conditioning,” she says.
Liz, fresh from a critically acclaimed run at Feinstein’s at the Regency, has been helping out Hudson Stage in more ways than lending her voice once a year for the past seven “Divas” events.
“I love to cook, so I handle the catering for the opening-night parties,” she says. “That’s one of the ways I contribute.”
How positively anti-diva of her.
“There’s something really magical about this benefit,” Liz says. “A beautiful setting, incredibly talented people, and it’s not overly fancy. There’s something relaxed about it. You don’t have to get all dressed up. You can have a picnic and wine and then, immediately after the concert, hang out with the people you’ve just seen perform.
“The performers have had a great time, the audience has had a great time, and then they get together,” she adds. “It’s a very unusual kind of event, unlike any benefit I’ve ever done. There’s a community feel to it — which I think everyone enjoys.”
Liz says she’s excited by Hudson Stage’s success and “how the community has embraced it.”
The theater company, which performs at Woodward Hall on the Briarcliff campus of Pace University, is coming off another successful season, with staged readings and main-stage productions of Jeffrey Hatcher’s “Murderers” and John Cariani’s “Almost, Maine.”
The hosts for the “Divas” evening will be Broadway veterans, too: Mount Kisco residents Lauren Kennedy, who played The Lady of the Lake in “Spamalot,” and her husband, Alan Campbell, a Tony nominee for “Sunset Boulevard.”
This year’s event gets under way at 7 p.m. with cocktails and hors d’ouevres, and the concert begins at sundown. Ticketbuyers — who pay $100 a head — will be given the exact address, on Baptist Church Road in Yorktown Heights. If it should rain, ticketholders will be notified of the alternate location.
The evening will also include a silent auction for Broadway tickets, access to a Paris apartment and tickets to sporting events.
Ann will arrive at the venue having just flown in from a gig in Finland.
“I will have driven four hours, taken an eight-hour plane ride, gone through customs and then immediately go from the airport to the ‘Divas’ concert,” she says.
All of this with a broken arm that has forced her to wear a cast. But no ordinary cast would do.
“It’s cool and black and it looks kind of diva, dominatrix,” she says. “I’ll put a little bling on it and be ready to go.”
Not willing to disappoint “Divas” regulars — who expect her to repeat her feat of creating a Hudson-Stage-related song on the spot based on audience suggestions — Ann’s willing to do whatever it takes to please.
“I can’t play the piano with the cast, and someone will have to play for me,” she says. “If the pianist they hire doesn’t like to do that, then I will sing Acapulco,” she jokes, describing a style of singing involves “a pineapple and coconut flavoring.”
Of course, after the odyssey from Finland to Yorktown, “whatever song I do make up is going to be from another state of consciousness.”
“But I told Dan yes, because it really is one of the most fun, diva-bonding, audience-bonding experiences. It’s a great cause, but it’s also a magical night. Growing up in Chicago, we used to love nights at Ravinia outside. I really like the vibe.”

“Divas 2008”
Where: a Yorktown Heights private home, with details provided to ticketbuyers
When: July 19, cocktails and hors d’ouevres at 7 p.m.; concert at sundown
Tickets: $100
Call: 914-271-2811
Web: www.hudsonstage.com
Note: In the event of inclement weather, the event will be held at an alternate location and ticketholders will be notified of the change.
With: Alan Campbell (“Sunset Boulevard”), Lauren Kennedy (“Spamalot”); Liz Callaway (“Miss Saigon”), Ann Hampton Callaway (“Swing!”) and others to be named.

Photos, from top, courtesy of Hudson Stage: Ann Hampton Callaway, Liz Callaway, Alan Campbell and Lauren Kennedy

For some theater groups, choosing a new season is a closely guarded secret.
But Pleasantville’s Axial Theater — a group that celebrates collaboration between its artists and its audience — is planning its 10th season by opening up the process to the public, under the stars.
Saturday’s “Axial Under the Stars” event, held at Mohegan Colony Schoolhouse in Crompond, is billed as “a casual evening of theater” — and it’s shaping up to be just that.

Here’s this week’s video, tied to Friday’s Fourth of July performance by John Pizzarelli at Caramoor.

“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.”
So says Orsino, the lovestruck duke in the opening of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”
Director John Christian Plummer will have musicians play on when the romantic comedy opens tonight at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison.
Plummer, who lives in Cold Spring, is directing at the festival for the first time, but he’s well-acquainted with the Bard.
When he was fresh out of Tufts University — where he directed a “Twelfth Night” — he created the Albany-based Actors Shakespeare Company, which presented nearly two dozen productions over seven summers.
Plummer’s parents have lived in the area for 15 years or so, and his wife, actress Maia Guest — who plays Feste the clown in “Twelfth Night” — trod the Boscobel lawn in “The Rivals” two summers ago and was Phoebe in “As You Like It” more than a dozen years ago.
Regular HVSF patrons know that music always finds its way into the tent at the Boscobel Restoration, the festival’s home:

When Paul Binder and Michael Christensen met at the San Francisco Mime Troupe in 1972, they clicked right away.

“We had a great time together,” says Christensen. “We made each other laugh. We enjoyed hanging out. Ideas would tumble and we always existed in a spirit of play. We played a lot together, like brothers.”

They are a study in contrasts: Binder, a Brooklynite, is loud and takes the lead; Christensen, who is from Walla Walla, Wash., is quiet and chooses his words carefully.

“And therein lies the tale,” says Christensen.

People – little girls, in particular – might come to Westchester Broadway Theatre’s production of “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast” wanting to see Belle, the pretty bookworm who yearns to escape her provincial little town.

And they will.

There’s the blue dress, then the yellow dress. Look! She has a book just like in the video!

Rena Strober is excellent in the role, a sweet presence at the heart of this story of love, loss, sacrifice and redemption. Her voice is clear, pure and unadorned. In short, she’s every bit of what the part demands.

Joseph Mahowald as the Beast – an actor practically invisible under wigs and prosthetic makeup pieces – also sings loud and clear. His Beast runs the gamut of emotions, anger to confusion to vulnerability. Yes, this Beast has feelings.

Still, there’s not much singing for the Beast, which makes Mahowald’s Act 1 closer – “If I Can’t Love Her” – all the more of a revelation.

After covering a lot of ground – from his lair through the castle to a parapet on the castle’s roof in Peter Barbieri Jr.’s lovely set – he covers just as much emotional ground. And his final note, held for what seems an eternity, had a preview audience chatting in wonder through the intermission.

But the performances of the title characters are really just the start: Enchantment lies behind the thick glass doors of the dinner theater.

It is operatic in scope, following the intertwined lives of white Westchesterites, African-Americans and Jewish immigrants – and in 1998, “Ragtime” lost the best-musical Tony to “The Lion King.”

But for the next three days, “Ragtime” – based on E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel – soars again, with an ambitious concert staging at the White Plains Performing Arts Center.

Concert versions have become popular, with the successful “Encores!” series at Manhattan’s City Center leading to Broadway runs of “Chicago” and “Wonderful Town.”

The idea behind “Encores!” is to present forgotten shows, difficult shows or shows people love but never get to see. The actors hold scripts, there is some staging, but it’s a one-weekend affair, with just a hint of costumes and no sets.

That is the same concept behind “Ragtime” – WPPAC’s first “Broadway in Concert” offering.

Like “Encores!,” “Ragtime” will be performed with little in the way of sets or costumes.

But inlike “Encores!,” the script will be memorized by director Sidney J. Burgoyne’s cast of 21 who play 50 characters.

Burgoyne, a fixture at Symphony Space, where he’s part of the Thalia Follies political cabaret, was in the “Man of La Mancha” cast that inaugurated the new performing arts center in White Plains. He played the priest and sang the memorable “I’m Only Thinking of Him.”

Now he’s directing “Ragtime,” which will star Jerry Dixon as Coalhouse Walker, the role created by Brian Stokes Mitchell in a production that landed Audra McDonald a Tony award.

Dixon will direct the next mainstage WPPAC show – “Ain’t Misbehavin’” – which runs Feb. 28 through March 16.

Burgoyne and Dixon took a break from rehearsal to chat.

So two weeks of rehearsals?

Burgoyne: “Not quite: 68 hours. And some of those hours have passed.”

That’s a lot of work for five performances.

Burgoyne: “But if you’re going to do a lot of work, this is the lot of work to be doing.

It’s epic, isn’t it?

Burgoyne: “The scale of it is huge. I sometimes refer to it as Everest.”

Your actors won’t hold scripts?
Burgoyne: “It’s just a difficult story to tell without being free. You can do ‘Brigadoon’ with tuxedos and a Tartan sash standing in front of music stands, but somehow this one didn’t lend itself to that.”

Have you done the show before?

Burgoyne: “No. It’s fresh to many of us. That makes it good, because we don’t have preconceived ideas about a million-dollar set. We’re just telling a story.”

Is it your hope to mount a full production of “Ragtime” down the road?
Burgoyne: “I hope that because we’re doing it small, people will see that they can do it small. Right now, I’m looking to Opening Night and making it as good as I possibly can, which is terrific. Anything beyond that is so far out of my scope of thought right now. But we all have dreams.”

You were in “Man of La Mancha,” the first show at the new White Plains Performing Arts Center. Is it a new home for you?
Burgoyne: “A new artistic home, yes. It’s a really wondrous place: a beautiful theater, very comfortable, great sightlines. It’s a great place to present your work, as an actor and as a director.”

And Jerry, you’ll direct a full production of “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” Have you directed that before?
Dixon: “No. I haven’t even seen it. I’ve seen pieces on the Tonys, but I’ve never seen a regional production. But I loved the music. (WPPAC Executive Director) Jack Batman called me up and said, ‘Hey, have you ever done “Ain’t Misbehavin’?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Good.” And I knew exactly where he was coming from. They want to bring fresh productions to White Plains, not the ones everyone sees all over the country.”

You couldn’t find two more different shows to follow each other.
Dixon: “There’s epic theater and there’s dramatic theater. And ‘Ragtime,’ to me, balances perfectly between the two of them. You have these iconic characters but they have to seem real in the scenes. There’s a danger of these characters becoming representational. In ‘Ain’t Misbehavin,’’ the characters are bigger than life but they’re real people still. They’re presenting this breaking-out-of-the-box theater, but they’re also, when it comes down to them, real people, too.”

Burgoyne: “It always comes back to telling the truth.”

Have you two worked together before?
Burgoyne: “We met at the (Actors) Equity auditions for the first part of the season. He was sitting next to me, and I watched the way he dealt with people and spoke with people and after a while I said, ‘That’s Coalhouse. He’s Coalhouse.’”

Dixon: (Laughing.) “It wasn’t on my radar at all.”

You were like: “I have a show to direct…”

Burgoyne: “I had made up my mind at that moment. So I just kept at him and told him to take it seriously and he said ‘I never dismiss any idea.’”

Dixon: “I said ‘I heard you, I heard you.’ I’m just digesting that information.”

How’s Coalhouse fitting you?
Dixon: “I consider myself a fairly happy person, but doing Coalhouse I do have to admit to myself that I can access rage.”

Burgoyne: “It’s gorgeous!”

Dixon: “We forget those emotions that we keep in check because we’re part of a society. I wasn’t wondering if I had it, I was just surprised at how easily it was accessed.”

Burgoyne: “What happens to Coalhouse is cruelty. And to think that people thought it was cruel but didn’t do anything about it and it kept going on – and it’s still going on. I love the theater because the last thing we want to let people know that it’s doing is showing them the mirror.”

Dixon: “The piece tells us that one injustice is not enough to make a dramatic play. We are all complicit in saying ‘It’s all right. It’s not just. But it’s all right.’ But it’s not all right.”

This is the full show?

Burgoyne: “People are going to see the complete ‘Ragtime.” There’s nothing we can cut.”

How big is your “Ain’t Misbehavin’” cast?
Dixon: “Three women and two men.”

Burgoyne: (With mock indignation.) “Five people and three weeks to rehearse it? Fine.”

Dixon: (Laughing.) “Don’t you dare! Do you know how many songs are in it? Thirty-two songs. Each of them is like presenting 32 different plays. You’re creating moments.”

Are you the kind of directors who, once the show is open, will continue to give the cast notes on their performances?

Burgoyne: “Sure. As much as you can.”

Dixon: “Not much. I think the company needs to feel it’s their show. I love what August Wilson used to say about the relay of a production. It starts with the writer and he takes the baton and hands it off to the director. And the director hands it off to the actors. The actors give it to the crew and to the technicians and then we all give it to the audience and it’s theirs. You have to relinquish the baton.”

Burgoyne: “I only have a weekend, so they’ll be hearing from me. But as an actor, I know that the first really good performance I give is when I know the director isn’t there. Then suddenly I stop thinking about what’s next and just let go.”
‘RAGTIME’
Where: White Plains Performing Arts Center, City Center mall, Main Street at Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains.
When: Tonight, tomorrow and Sunday at 8 (in what producers are calling a “Super Bowl alternative.”); Sunday at 2 p.m.
Tickets: $45 and $35.
Call: 914-328-1600.
Web: www.wppac.com.

PHOTO by Tania Savayan of The Journal News: Sidney J. Burgoyne, right, director of the concert version of “Ragtime” production at White Plains Performing Arts Center with Jerry Dixon, who plays Coalhouse Walker

Actors and directors often talk about being “in the moment,” reacting to what’s going on in a performance as if they’re experiencing it for the first time.

That approach, they say, gives each performance a grounding in the truth.

Axial Theatre – an 8-year-old ensemble based in Yorktown with rehearsal studios in Pleasantville -takes that premise and runs with it, with its second annual “Ten-Minute Play Festival,” now through Feb. 2 at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Pleasantville.

The festival’s six plays – each reasonably close to 10 minutes long – put a premium on moments.

Stephen Palgon, the festival’s producer, performs in one of the six short plays and has written another. He says this is not theater on a grand scale.

“That’s the thing with these 10-minute plays: They’re very much moment in time, little picture,” he says during a break from rehearsals.

Moments can be surreal – as in Ryan Mallon’s “The Tunnel,” when an old man appears from nowhere to advise a young man who is contemplating a journey. Or they can be a slice of life – as in Patrick Davin’s “Balls,” where two old rivals, now stay-at-home dads, meet at a driving range and renew their rivalry on a different stage.

The fact that these are small moments doesn’t mean they are quickly arrived at. The plays have been crafted by Axial members, two of whom – Mallon and Gaby Fox – are having their works produced here for the first time. Both have been studying with Axial playwrighting guru Tony Howarth, who directs Linda Giuliano’s play “Whale Watch” in the festival.

Mallon, who has studied with Axial founder Howard Meyer for years, says he expected to be in the festival, but not with “The Tunnel.” He had another play, “The Red Dress,” that he thought was further along in the process and a more likely candidate.

But the festival’s producers picked “The Tunnel,” which stars Robert Kya-Hill and Michael Pennacchio as an older man and a younger man.

Kya-Hill, who lives in Co-op City in The Bronx, came to Axial through auditions.

He’s a working actor, with a specialty in Shakespeare, which has “kept me working,” he says including in productions of “The Tempest,” “A Winter’s Tale” and “Othello.”

When a visitor points out that his rehearsal of “The Tunnel” for the “Ten-Minute Play Festival” ran upward of 13 minutes, Kya-Hill is ready with a response.

“Those extra three minutes, once you get the whole thing down, it starts to congeal and that space in there will be taken away,” he says with a broad smile. “We’ll get it down to 10.”

“Each piece has its own universe, its own reality that appeals to you on some level,” he says. “This piece has a mysterious quality that I like. You don’t know where this old guy comes from.”

Kya-Hill’s co-star is Michael Pennacchio, a 23-year-old Pleasantville native and graduate of Westlake High School. After graduating from SUNY Oneonta with an acting degree, he got in touch with Meyer and began taking acting classes.

He came to “The Tunnel” through the back door. Producers needed someone to read with auditioners and Pennacchio got the call. After reading lines with several actors, it turned into an audition for Pennacchio.

“And poof! Here I am!” he says with a laugh.

He plays a character named Young Man, who wants to go through the tunnel, but is unsure. Mallon’s script is full of unknowns, something that appeals to Pennacchio.

“Ambiguity is an awesome theme in this play. I love the ambiguity,” he says.

Mallon, 24, is a Carmel High School graduate who now lives in Yorktown. He has studied with Meyer for nearly a decade and has turned to playwrighting in recent years.

Mallon says Meyer’s use of the Meisner Technique – which puts an emphasis on imagination – has spurred him along creatively, making him look at the world “as if something has happened to me and bringing that to the stage, putting my emotional past to work.”

Mallon has learned much over the years, he says, and one revelation sparked his turn to playwriting.

“I don’t like being exposed,” he says. “As an actor, you’re kind of screwed if you don’t like to be exposed. I miss acting, but it’s very tough. Not that writing’s easy.”

It’s also not easy, he says, to have one of his plays produced for the first time and hearing actors not saying his lines correctly.

“I picked those words very carefully,” he says, adding quickly, “but that’s what rehearsals are for.”

“I have a totally different perspective from this side,” he says. “I’ll definitely be a different actor after this.”

“The Tunnel” is about initiation – the older generation helping the younger – and about brotherhood. It’s also about taking risks at a crossroads in your life, he says, and facing your fears.

Writing, Mallon has learned, is about rewriting, with the input of actors and directors. Palgon, who directs the play, had some concerns at the outset, Mallon recalls.

“Stephen was looking for the old man’s stakes in the play – and he was right about it,” Mallon says.

“The Tunnel” came to Axial’s attention during the ensemble’s reading series, a regular look at new works that is the company’s lifeblood.

Mallon joined Axial as an apprentice, working for a year to prove himself and earn membership in the group, which numbers 15 theater artists in all aspects of production: producers, directors, writers, actors.

Palgon says the company is selective, not competitive.

“It’s not about competition. We kind of select the people and it’s about finding the people who feel right and are dedicated. The biggest thing is there’s a big difference between being a member of a company and being an actor who’s a lone wolf and just going off and doing your thing.

“To be a company member, you’ve gotta want to do all the other stuff that has nothing to do with being on stage.

“Those moments to me, I love them. I’ve done a lot of acting in the city where I’ve just acted. This, to me, is so much more fulfilling,” he says.

A TV producer by trade, he wears many hats at Axial, particularly with this festival.

“I worked on the design for the postcard, I’m in touch with the set designer, I’m working with everybody to make sure the plays are coming together, I’m helping with the casting. Then when it all comes up, it’s just a full experience,” he says. “I love being in this company. I think we have something really special here.”

Casting Axial shows is tricky: They want to hire people who share their commitment, but can’t pay what Equity companies can. So it’s rewarding for Palgon to have found an actor like Kya-Hill, who gets it and can bring a depth of experience to the stage at St. John’s Episcopal Church for the next couple of weekends.

“We’ve gotten burned sometimes when we’ve brought people in from the outside,” Palgon says, “but he was just a right fit. He speaks our language and he’s just a good man,” he says.

Putting an experienced actor alongside a newcomer like Pennacchio plays perfectly into the action of “The Tunnel” – old teaching young, Palgon says.

The entire process is a teachable moment, Palgon says, recalling playwright Mallon’s awe at hearing actors speak his words for the first time at the audition.

“That’s what this stuff is about,” he says. “This is about discovering new voices. And our audience gets the experience of being there for the first time.”

That first moment.

PHOTO: Michael Pennacchio and Robert Kya Hill rehearse the Axial Theater production of Ryan Mallon’s play “The Tunnel.” (Photo by Ricky Flores/The Journal News)

‘TUNNELING THROUGH: GLIMPSES FROM THE IN BETWEEN’
What: Axial Theatre’s second annual Ten-Minute Play Festival.
Where: St. John’s Episcopal Church, 8 Sunnyside Ave., Pleasantville.
When: Through Feb. 2; 8 p.m. tonight, tomorrow, Thursday, Feb. 1 and Feb. 2; 3 p.m. tomorrow and Feb. 2.
Tickets: $25 suggested donation.
Call: 914-286-7680.
Web: www.axialtheatre.org
With: Doug Darwin, Patrick Davin, Jess Erick, Margie Ferris, Dale Furnia, Gail Greenstein, Mark Gorham, Robert Kya-Hill, Stephen Palgon, Michael Pennacchio, Cyndi Sciacca, Matt Walton.
On the program
“The Tunnel,” by Ryan Mallon: An old man finds a young man on the verge of a life-altering decision.
“In Between Stops,” by Stephen Palgon: Two men encounter each other on a Metro-North train and talk about an affair one of them is having with the other’s wife.
“Balls,” by Patrick Davin: Two stay-at-home dads, former competitors, meet at a driving range and renew their rivalry on a new field of play.
“Whale Watch,” by Linda Giuliano: A woman dips her ear into the sea and sets off an unlikely chain of events.
“Broken Ornaments,” by Rachel Jones: An alcoholic mother and her daughter meet for the first time in two years in a department-store tea room.
“Freedom Tower,” by Gaby Fox: A father’s loss becomes his obsession.

Last summer, when Mara Mills first saw what Livia and Marc Straus were planning at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, she wanted in.

Their exhibit, “Size Matters: XXL” includes 31 pieces of oversized art, epic art. Art of dramatic scale.

Mills, a theatrical director who ran the Herbert Mark Newman Theater at the Pleasantville Y from 1991 to 2004, and local director Tom Kramer (no relation to this reporter) teamed up with the Hudson Valley Writers Center to sponsor a playwrighting possibility.

They invited playwright friends – and those who caught wind of it – to come to Peekskill to see the exhibit and be inspired. Some, farther flung, had images sent to them.

Thirty-five playwrights were inspired to write and submit scripts.

Judges winnowed the 35 scripts to six, judging them on four criteria: relevance to the image, dialogue, character and dramatic arc or integrity.

The judges included playwright Staci Swedeen, whose “Goldman Project” was seen Off-Broadway in October, Kramer, Mills, actor Steve Wescott, Livia and Marc Straus, HVCCA administrator Jessica Rogers, and Brenda Connor-Bey, the poet laureate of Greenburgh. (Yes, Greenburgh has a poet laureate.)

The plan was to present the new plays in front of the works that inspired them – and that is exactly what will happen: Kramer will act as docent, escorting the audience, which is limited to 30 for space reasons, through the exhibit. When they reach a featured painting, they’ll sit on the floor and the play will begin.

Why theater in a museum?

“I started in street theater,” says Mills. “To me, the way you really make theater is you make it any place you can.”

The art-theater tour will start at Dutch artist Tjebbe Beekman’s Untitled mixed media on canvas (118×65 inches), which looks for all the world like a tall apartment building. It inspired Queens-based playwright Theodore D. Kemper to write “Nearer My God to Thee,” which puts God in the penthouse of this apartment building. That play features Jay and Irene Howard and Tom Beck.

Next is Richard Jackson’s sculptural “Living Room,” a cube (123×144 x 144 inches) in which paint has been splattered over a chair, walls and a TV. This will be a backdrop for William Coyle’s play “Living Room,” with Kurt Lauer and Joan Cavallo as a couple using art as a prism for their relationship.

After that is Francesca DiMattio’s “Black Ship,” an oil on canvas (84×120 inches), in front of which Teri Anzalone will present Barbara Fischer’s play “Mothership.”

Kramer will then take the audience over to John Newsom’s “The Great Divide,” oil on canvas (90×120 inches) and Joshua Kashinsky’s play of the same name, with Nadine Greco and Joan Cavallo.

Next is Yan Pei-Ming’s massive “Red Self-Portrait,” an oil on canvas that is 137 1/2 inches square.

David Fox, a London native who has lived in the States for 26 years and now calls Brewster home, says he knew instantly that he would use “Red Self-Portrait” as his inspiration.

“I saw the play instantly,” he says. “It took me 30 seconds and I saw this whole thing playing out.”

The play that he saw is now called “Self Portrait” featuring actors Neil Schliefer, Daniel Basiletti and Tom Coppola. It’s about an artist who’s been arrested by the state for creating unofficial art. With Yan Pei-Ming’s stern and huge image as a backdrop, the artist is interrogated for subversive activities.

Fox’s questioner, Schliefer, raises questions about the value of art and the role of the artist: “It’s not a portrait, it’s a billboard,” he says accusingly. And “This image incites the people to riot.” And “Art upholds an ideology. What does your art uphold?”

“Self-Portrait” is Fox’s first completed play. After a recent rehearsal at which he first heard actors reciting lines he had written, he was pragmatic but optimistic – and beaming.

“It needs a little work,” he said. “But it’s getting there.”

After the audience sees “Self-Portrait,” they will be led around the corner to Toba Khedoori’s “Holes,” a massive oil on paper measuring 143×236 inches. The series of dots appear to be a negative image of a starry sky, and inspired New Jersey playwright Ron Frankel to write “You Owe Me One,” which features Kurt Lauer and Tom Beck.

This collaboration is not without boundaries: Livia Straus is understandably nervous when the actors stand too close to the art, so Mills adjusts their positions.

Still, this marriage of new art and new theater seems a good fit: The art is so fresh, says Livia Straus, “that the paint is still drying on ‘The Great Divide.’”

And, adds Mills: “The ink is still drying on some of these plays.

‘IMAGE & SCRIPT’
What: Six short plays, inspired by and presented in front of six large-scale works of art. A collaboration between the Hudson Valley Writers Center and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art.
Where: Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, 1701 Main St., Peekskill.
When: 3 and 5 p.m. Sunday.
Tickets: $12 HVCCA & Hudson Valley Writers’ Center members, $15 non-members.
Call: 914-788-0100.

PHOTO: Mara Mills and Tom Kramer in front of “Red Self-Portrait,” by Yan Pei-Ming, at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art. Photo by Seth Harrison.

Starting to work up this year’s high-school-musical coverage and got a note from Alex Malecki at Kennedy Catholic High School in Somers, who helps to run the Hope for Change Foundation, a cancer-fighting charity.

Since they’re show people, they fight cancer with entertainment and this week, HFC presents “Hope at Night,” its tribute to classic TV:

Alex writes: “Featuring memorable episodes from some of your favorite shows, along with two song-and-dance numbers to mix things up, Hope at Night goes up goes up January 4 – 5 at 8 p.m. in the auditorium at Kennedy Catholic High School.  Tickets can be purchased at the door for a suggested donation of $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and $10 for students with ID, and 100 percent of everything raised goes to benefit breast cancer research.  For more information, please call 914-206-9617, e-mail aboutus@hopeforchange.org or visit HFC online at www.hopeforchange.org.�

They’ll be  doing tributes to shows you know and an oldies medley to keep things lively.

A good cause and a good way to kick off the new year.

The last time fans heard John Sterling, “The Voice of the Yankees,” intone his fan-favorite “Yankees win! The-e-e-e-e-e-e Yankees win!” was on Oct. 7. Then the Yanks were knocked out of the playoffs and Sterling’s radio season was over.

Not that the Yanks have been off anyone’s radar – with A-Rod gone and back, Joe Torre here then gone, and Joe Girardi tapped as new skipper – but it might just be about now that Yankees fans start to think about spring and long to hear Sterling’s voice again as a sign of warm baseball nights to come.

On Saturday in Irvington, they can get their Sterling fix, when the broadcaster comes to Irvington Town Hall Theater to combine two lifelong loves: Broadway and baseball. He’ll appear alongside Broadway friends Brad Little (“Phantom of the Opera”) and Barbara McCulloh (“The King and I”) in a one-night-only performance. Sterling chatted by phone last week.

Word has it you’re a big Broadway fan.

“I would like to say – this is probably untrue, like everything else you hear, but it’s close – I probably have either seen or have the Broadway album or CD of almost every Broadway show. If you go down the list of all the great Broadway musicals, there’s no greater Broadway fan. It’s not that I’ve studied. It’s something I’ve loved since I was a little boy. I’ve loved music and sports.”

What are your all-time favorites?

“I like a whole bunch of things. It’s like saying ‘What’s your favorite Sinatra song?’ It’s not possible.”

How about a top five?

“My top five, even though I love many more than five, would be: ‘South Pacific,’ ‘Guys and Dolls,’ ‘Camelot,’ ‘My Fair Lady,’ ‘West Side Story,’ and ‘A Chorus Line.’ See? That’s six.”

Any recent musicals among your favorites?

“I have not seen anything that’s captured me like those shows. My idea of a Broadway show is Jerry Herman.”

Like “Mack & Mabel”?

“I’m singing a song from ‘Mack & Mabel’ at this event: ‘I Won’t Send Roses.’ That’s a song that Robert Preston talked, so maybe I can do that.” (Laughs.)

Will you talk it through?

“Well, have you heard Preston do it?”

Yes.

“I’m not going to do it any better than Preston – and I won’t act it out as well. But I’m going to attempt it, let’s put it that way.

“It isn’t that I don’t like the new shows. Oh, and ‘Kiss Me, Kate,’ which I love. It’s just that every one of those songs is great. Every single one. ‘Li’l Abner’ and ‘Most Happy Fella’ and on and on and on. I’m really sorry that all those guys and gals died and they’re not writing those shows.”

How’d you get involved with the show coming up in Irvington?

“Brad Little and Barbara McCulloh are friends, and they both have New York credits. Brad played both Raoul and the Phantom in ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ in New York and around the world. And Barbara has starred in ‘King and I’ and ‘Peter Pan.’ She was the perfect Anna.”

How did you get to know them?

“Brad was singing Raoul, and his big song is ‘All I Ask of You.’ I would kid on the air, I would sing a bar or two of a Broadway song. I’d say something like ‘The manager wants so-and-so to hit the ball to the right side to move the runner to third.’ So Stump Merrill told Roberto Kelly: ‘That’s all I ask of you.’ So Brad, listening as a Yankee fan, said ‘You gotta learn the lyrics.’ He sent me the lyrics and I called him and we became buddies.

“A few years ago, Marvin Hamlisch said to me in the dugout way before a game, ‘John, You’re not singing the Broadway reference songs anymore. I want to hear more of it.’ We’ve become friends. Our personalities match.”

Will you sing any of his songs? It seems like “The Way We Were” might be appropriate for the Yankees next year.

“I’ll sing a little bit of this and that. They’ll hear Broadway songs sung beautifully by Brad and Barbara.”

Will you also do a little hot-stove chat?

“Yes. I’ll talk about where the music came from and who wrote it and where the Yankees were in those years and probably tell a Yankees story or two. And there’ll be a Q&A, where people can ask some questions.”

Will Hank Steinbrenner allow you to do something from “Damn Yankees”?

“They’re going to do ‘Six Months Out of Every Year.’ ”

Since you love musicals and baseball, let’s see if you can play Broadway casting director. If Joe Girardi were to play a character on Broadway, who would it be?

“He could be the manager in ‘Damn Yankees.’ Or Luther Billis in ‘South Pacific.’ ”

How about A-Rod? Hamlet?

“He might play Joey in ‘Most Happy Fella.’ ”

And Joe Torre?

“Maybe he could play Nathan Detroit. And Jeter could play Sky Masterson.”

What about John Sterling?

“I’d play the Alfred Drake role, the one Brian Stokes Mitchell did in the revival of ‘Kiss Me, Kate.’ (The character of Fred/Petruchio.)

Could you sing it?

“If you could only sing that music and Cole Porter’s lyrics, which were so great. And the fact that he played an obviously stuffy, egotistical guy. That’s a great role.”

Here’s the latest “In the Wings” television segment. You can also see it tonight, between 5 and 5:30, on RNN.

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In a week that has seen a strike on Broadway, they’re opening a laugh-out-loud funny play by Neil Simon.

In a week that includes a strike by television writers, this play deals with television writers.

It’s like “Ripped from the Headlines: Greenville Community Theater.”

The play is “Laughter on the 23rd Floor,” Simon’s valentine to the place where he got his comedy start, in the writers’ room of Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows.”

That room – which earned the nickname “The Harvard of Comedy” – was the workplace of Larry Gelbart (“M*A*S*H,” “Tootsie”) Mel Tolkin (“All in the Family”), Mel Brooks (“Young Frankenstein,” “The Producers”), Carl Reiner (“The Dick Van Dyke Show”), Selma Diamond (“Night Court”), Danny Simon (“The Carol Burnett Show”) and, eventually, Woody Allen (“Annie Hall”).

Oh, and a fellow named Neil Simon (“The Sunshine Boys,” “Plaza Suite,” “The Odd Couple,” “Barefoot in the Park,” “Lost in Yonkers,” “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” “Biloxi Blues,” “Broadway Bound,” “The Good Doctor.”)

At the center of the action in “Laughter on the 23rd Floor” is Max Prince, a larger-than-life, blustery comic genius who is talented beyond belief but tortured, too. The sad clown.

Greenville’s “Laughter” director, Janice Fay Hanges, cast Antonio D. Soares Jr. to play Max. She lovingly calls Soares “a nut case who’s up for anything.”

“He gives it his all and is very brave about it. And that’s what we need in Max” the director says.

“It’s so much fun. You find out the background of all those guys who were writing for Sid Caesar. And you see there are little bits of those famous people – and their stereotypical neuroses – in the characters here.”

Hanges loves the moment in the second act when the team is working on an actual sketch for “The Max Prince Show.”

“Since ‘Julius Caesar’ with Brando has just opened, they’ve decided that that’s going to be their parody of the week. It’s pretty funny. Tony does a really good Marlon Brando. Another guy does a great John Geilgud, another does a great James Mason.”

Greenville does two main-stage shows a year, fall and spring, at Edgemont High School. They also present eight half-hour workshops throughout the year at Greenville Middle School. Last month, they read scary stories.

But the ghosts are gone. This weekend and next, for five performances, it’s all about the laughter coming from that room on the 23rd floor.

“Laughter on the 23rd Floor”
Where: Edgemont High School Theater, White Oak Lane, Scarsdale.
When: 8 tonight, tomorrow and Nov. 24; 2 p.m. Nov. 24 and 25.
Tickets: $18; $15 for seniors, students; $12 for groups of 10 or more. Nov. 24 matinee is $10.
Call: 914-636-2863.
With: Ray Eckerle, Peter Gehn, Stewart Hanges, Ed Herman, Jean Kadela, Greg McCormack, Frank Orlando, Cathy Romanovitch and Antonio D. Soares Jr. Directed by Janice Fay Hanges.

Luke Yankee grew up a “showbiz kid,” the son of actress Eileen Heckart, an Oscar-winner for “Butterflies Are Free.”

As such, he rubbed elbows with big stars and heard his mother tell wonderful insider stories.

Eileen Heckart could dish.

So, it turns out, can her son. For the past five years, Yankee has been touring with a one-man show he calls “Diva Dish!” – a loving tribute to his mother, who died Dec. 31, 2001.

Yankee brings “Diva Dish!” to the White Plains Performing Arts Center on Friday. It’s a benefit for the theater, which has been reimagined as a home for professional musical theater. Later in the month, Yankee will direct the theater’s first mainstage production, “Man of La Mancha,” starring Broadway’s Robert Cuccioli.

But first, it’s time to dish.

“After my mother passed away, I was looking through all of her memorabilia and realized that I was the only one who knew all of these stories,” Yankee says.

The stories include tales of working with Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Bette Davis, among others.

“I realized that if I didn’t do something with this, an incredibly important piece of theater and Hollywood history would be lost forever,” Yankee says.

He put together a PowerPoint presentation with slides from his mother’s photo collection, and showed it to friends. That presentation became the multimedia show “Diva Dish!”

Yankee sings a few songs and tells plenty of stories, in which a son is added to the constellation: There’s Heckart talking with LBJ, and Ethel Merman teaching a young Luke how to mix a martini.

Yankee grew up in Fairfield County. Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward – friends of Heckart’s from their time working together on “Picnic” on Broadway – stopped in regularly.

It was in Heckart’s New Canaan living room that Newman gave the 14-year-old Yankee an important acting tip.

“He taught me how to upstage my co-star in children’s theater. I loved him forever for that,” Yankee says. “That was so cool of him.

“He taught me how to stare the guy down if he went up on his lines and make him look like a jerk. Of course, when I did it, it didn’t have the same impact as when Paul Newman did it.”

There are so many stories, Yankee can’t tell them all in the 90-minute intermissionless show. So in the show’s program, he prints a list of about 25 names of people he’s ready to talk about.

“After the scripted part, we bring up the house lights and I say to the audience: ‘Shout out a name and I’ll give you the dish’ and rattle off stories about Martha Stewart, Bob Fosse, Mae West. Just on and on,” he said.

“People get a charge out of it and every show is different.”

Celebrities flit through the performance, but Yankee says the show is really about a loving mother-son relationship.

“It’s not all about gossip,” he says. “My mother was a larger-than-life character, and I talk about saying goodbye to her for the last time, when she died of lung cancer, and it goes to some intimate places as well. It’s funny and heartfelt and touching.”

Still, with the time constraints of live theater, some stories went undished at some performances, so Yankee compiled them in a book, “Just Outside the Spotlight,” with a foreword by Mary Tyler Moore. He’ll sign copies of the book at Friday’s benefit performance in White Plains.

That’s a dish that won’t get cold.

The response to Bedford Community Theatre’s fall production, Fiddler on the Roof, has been so overwhelming that they’ve added a performance to the run.

Remaining performances are Nov. 16 at 7:30 p.m., Nov. 17 at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Nov. 18 at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. (The extra show is at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 18.)

All tickets are $15, reserved seating.

Box office opens one hour before each curtain.

Performances take place at the Bedford Hills Community House, just up the hill from the Bedford Hills Train Station.

“Fiddler on the Roof,� BCT’s sixth annual musical production, is directed by Laurie Lewis with musical direction by Kirk Ehrenreich and choreography by Karla Diamond. Peter Green, starring as Tevye, joins Marci Stearns-McCormick as Golde and a cast of more than 40 community members to transform the Bedford Hills Community House stage into the 1905 Russian village of Anatevka.

For more information about the production, including directions to the theater, visit www.bedfordcommunitytheatre.org.