Pamela Palmer Mutino knows loss: Her daughter, Maria, died from a heroin overdose at 23.

But Mutino also knows theater: She has produced five plays.

Her sixth play, “Swish — Maria in the Mourning: The Monologues,” gets a one-night-only staged reading Sept. 24 at 8 p.m. at Whipporwill Hall of The North Castle Public Library, 19 Whippoorwill Road East, Armonk. Admission is free, but donations are cheerfully accepted.

The reading is directed by Anthony Valbiro, who can currently be seen in several roles in “The Producers” at Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford. The original music is by Donna Cribari and Valbiro. The reading will include Cristine DiTota, Misti Tindiglia, Regina Singel and Lisa Pierce.

In “Swish,” which is also out in book form, Mutino shares memories—some happy, some painful—of her life dealing with her daughter’s addiction. She tries to paint a true picture of who Maria really was without sugarcoating it. In it, the audience will come to appreciate that addiction is a family affair, reaching well beyond those who battle the addiction in their own lives.

“Swish: Maria in the Mourning” is published by Outskirts Press and is available on Amazon.com.

Mutino has taught poetry, journalism, creative writing and every component of the language arts curriculum to students of all ages in the Port Chester School District since 1985. She lives in Port Chester, with her husband, Peter.

A reception and talkback follow the reading.

The reading is presented by the Armonk Players, who are sponsored by The Friends of the North Castle Public Library Inc.
For more information visit www.armonkplayers.org.

The tent will come down soon, but the memories of this season at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival will linger on. Here’s this week’s video segment.

In fall, winter and spring, Christian Jacobs is a student, pursuing a master’s degree in acting at the New School.

But this summer, the 24-year-old from Cortlandt has spent his days as a witch and his evenings as a drummer or a wild-haired, dirty mountain man.

Such is the life of an apprentice or intern at Garrison’s Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival: Young actors hired to carry spears or to play larger roles in the company that performs on a majestic bluff overlooking the Hudson Highlands.

I’ve been raving about Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival for years, but hadn’t taken Mrs. Kramer to see a show there till Friday, when we took in a magical, wonderful production of “Cymbeline,” directed by Terry O’Brien. (We were on vacation when the show opened in July.)

So many things will stay with me from this show:

Michael Borrelli as the silly Cloten, complete with a vanity mole.

Wesley Mann as the dutiful Pisanio, torn by his duty and what is right.

Last fall, Skylar Astin took a break from playing Georg in “Spring Awakening” on Broadway to venture into the unknown – his first feature film. Just how unknown he didn’t know until he got to Albuquerque, N.M., to shoot “Hamlet 2,” directed by Andy Fleming.

“When we got on set, we didn’t know what ‘Hamlet 2’ was going to be. Neither did Andy,” says Astin, a New City native and graduate of Clarkstown North High School. “We didn’t even know it was going to be a musical. Andy didn’t, either.”

As the new executive director of the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College, Wiley Hausam has four venues to fill with music, opera, dance and theater, a task he began contemplating soon after his appointment last month.But it’s in the common space – the cavernous lobby in the center on Anderson Hill Road – where he hopes to make an impact.

“We want this to be a place where all of Fairfield and Westchester feel it’s their cultural center, where if you come in here some night, it’ll be filled with people and there’ll be things to eat and drink and interesting things to see and great art in all the spaces,” he says.

Looking for something to do this fall? How about a scene-study class?

THE DRAMA CLASS in Piermont is accepting students for the fall Scene Study class. This class is for “serious” teens and adults and is taught by Sammi Gavich, founder and artistic director of NYC’s Working Girls Productions.

Classes are ongoing every Wednesday from 7 to 10, starting Oct. 8. Class is in Piermont. The cost is $60 per month and class size is limited. For more information about Sammi and a description of the class go to www.thedramaclass.blogspot.com.

You may contact Sammi at 845-613-7142 or thedramaclass@yahoo.com.

Here’s this week’s “In the Wings” video, with on-camera reviews of “Molly Snyder” in Stony Point and “The Producers” at Westchester Broadway Theatre. Enjoy!

Bedford Community Theatre is holding auditions for Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “The King & I,” directed by Carin Zakes, with musical direction by Kirk Ehrenreich and choreography by Karla Diamond.

Production dates are Nov. 14, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22 and 23.

Auditions will be held at the Bedford Hills Community House, just up the hill from the train station, at 74 Main St., Bedford Hills.

For teens and adults, auditions will be Sunday, Sept. 7, from 4 to 9 p.m.

For children age 8 and older, auditions will be Tuesday, Sept. 9, starting at 4 p.m. Adults and teens who missed tryouts on the 7th are invited to audition after 6 p.m. on the 9th.

All roles are open and the flyer announcing auditions promises “color-blind casting.”

To request an audition time slot, email catetesta@hotmail.com. Or you can just walk in to auditions. For details, including a character breakdown and rehearsal information, go to www.bedfordcommunitytheatre.org.

Producers are also looking for backstage and technical help. Go to their Web site for more on that.

Sad to report that Danny Goldstein’s remarkable production of “Godspell”—which I caught at the Paper Mill Playhouse a while back—won’t be coming to Broadway this fall, as planned. Producer  Adam Epstein announced yesterday that the revival of the Stephen Schwartz musical, based on Matthew’s Gospel, lost a major investor “in the harsh reality of the slowing economy.”

Still, he used the word “postponed,” not canceled, and declared “my passion for this vibrant production is unwavering and it is my goal to regroup as soon as possible.”

Schwartz said “I take comfort in my belief that productions happen when they are supposed to.  The cast and creative team was poised to create a terrific production and I have no doubt it will be just that when its time comes.”

The timing may have been affected by the success of “Hair” at the Delacorte in Central Park, which announced an extension into September. Perhaps the thinking was that two throwback musicals with a similar (should I say, “hippie”?) audience might be too much to handle.

Goldstein, a Mamaroneck kid whose “Godspell” was wildly inventive, didn’t want to talk yesterday. I was planning to chat with him for the fall preview. But maybe next fall?

Ticket holders will be automatically refunded.  Those with questions should call Telecharge customer service at 212-239-6210.

If you venture up to Stony Point before Sept. 7 and make your way to the pale green barn that is home to Rockland’s most adventurous little theater — Penguin Repertory Company — you’ll likely be 100 percent entertained by “Ten Percent of Molly Snyder,” Richard Strand’s smart comedy about identity and bureaucracy.
A play about red tape?
Yawn, right?
Wrong.
Not everything is as it seems in “Molly Snyder,” a brisk, well-acted and laugh-out-loud comedy directed by Thomas Caruso.
The two-person, 80-minute play stars Richard Kline, known to TV audiences as Larry from the ’70s sitcom “Three’s Company,” and Liz Zazzi, familiar to Penguin Rep audiences from last year’s “Tour de Farce.”

Sixteen months after Mel Brooks’ 12-time Tony-winner closed on Broadway, “The Producers” comes to Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford in a production that runs into November.

Starring Bob Amaral and Joel Newsome — two veterans of the show’s second national tour — the production is directed by David Edwards.

“The Producers” is the story of an unscrupulous Broadway producer and a meek accountant — Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom — who cook up a scheme to con little old ladies out of millions, put on the worst musical ever, and walk away with the money.

It was a 1968 film, starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, and took Broadway by storm in 2001, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. Lane and Broderick reprised their roles in a 2005 movie version of the musical.

When people told Vickilyn Reynolds that she looked like Hattie McDaniel – the actress who was the first black to win an Academy Award, for “Gone With the Wind” — she didn’t take it kindly.
“It was not a compliment to me, because I had a lot of self-hatred,” she says.
When her brother, Ronald Richardson, a Tony winner for “Big River,” told her she should tell McDaniel’s story, she didn’t want to hear it.
Reynolds didn’t know much about McDaniel, and what she did know she didn’t particularly like.
McDaniel won the Oscar for playing Mammy, Scarlett O’Hara’s straight-talking maid in the epic 1939 film.

There is no let-up in this theater beat.
Tonight, I’ll be at Westchester Broadway Theatre for the press night of “The Producers.”
Tomorrow, I’ll catch up with the apprentices at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival as they prepare “The Scottish Play” for a guests-only performance in a couple of weeks. Chris Edwards, so funny in HVSF’s “Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged),” directs it and runs the festival’s educational outreach program in local schools. He’ll apply what he learns with the apprentice cast to the tour he and a band of players will make in the upcoming school year.
Sunday, it’s up to Stony Point and Penguin Rep’s “Ten Percent of Molly Snyder,” a play I read to prepare for an interview that I hope will be as compelling in the telling as it is on the page.
In Sunday’s editions of the paper, and online, look for a feature on “Hattie…What I Need You to Know,” a loving musical tribute to Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American actor to win an Oscar. It was written by and stars Vickilyn Reynolds, the sister of W. Franklyn Richardson, pastor at Mount Vernon’s Grace Baptist Church, who is putting his considerable resources and connections behind the show and hopes to bring it to Broadway in the not-too-distant future.
Still working on plenty of Fall Entertainment Preview stories, so stay tuned.

They are three letters that strike fear in the hearts of people nearly everywhere: DMV.

The Department of Motor Vehicles may be the one place where Americans encounter unapologetic, full-tilt bureaucracy on a regular basis: They have what you need, but to get it you’re going to have to do what they say.
Typically, it’s no laughing matter, but Richard Strand’s new comedy – “Ten Percent of Molly Snyder,” on stage at Stony Point’s Penguin Repertory Company through Sept. 7 – takes the DMV drudgery and spins it into a dark comedy.