Arts

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust will present its second Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts, a city-wide, 16-day performing and visual arts festival Oct. 10-25.

Before it surfaces Off-Broadway this fall, the hip-hop musical, Clay, will make a big noise at Kansas City Repertory Theatre's Copaken Stage Sept. 6-28.

Tad Mosel, who adapted James Agee's novel "A Death in the Family" into the Pultizer Prize-winning stage play All the Way Home, died Aug. 24 in Concord, NH. He was 86. For the last 18 years of his life, he resided at the Havenwood-Heritage Heights Retirement community in Concord.

Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman's Scratch, charting her relationship with her sick mother, will get its world premiere at Toronto's Factory Theatre Mainspace Oct. 4-Nov. 2. The playwright, who began the work when she was 16, will also play the teenage daughter character, Anna.

"With a Song in My Heart: John Pizzarelli Sings the Music of Richard Rodgers," a new recording by the jazz guitarist and vocalist who interprets the American Songbook, is in stores now from Telarc.

Ace, the Broadway-aimed musical about a boy's flight through his own family history, begins performances Aug. 27 in Arlington, VA, with a flock of divas helping to keep the production aloft.

Maggie Burke, Natalie Gold, Michael Hayden, Gio Perez and Michael Warner will be featured in Steven Levenson's new play, The Language of Trees, the second production of the Roundabout Underground program, which introduces and cultivates artists in a 62-seat space.

Complete casting has been announced for Goodman Theatre's world premiere musical Turn of the Century, directed by Tommy Tune and starring the previously announced Rachel York and Jeff Daniels.

Broadway's Burke Moses, Gaston of Beauty and the Beast, will play Capt. Von Trapp opposite reality TV audition winner Elicia MacKenzie, of CBC TV's "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?," in the new Toronto production of The Sound of Music.

Signature Theatre Company's new production of Leslie Lee's The First Breeze of Summer, starring Leslie Uggams, has been extended by one week from Sept. 28 to Oct. 5.

Phantom - The Las Vegas Spectacular played its 1,000th performance Aug. 25 at The Venetian Resort.

Key Brand Entertainment CEO John Gore announced Aug. 26 the sale of the 2,300-seat Canon Theatre and the 700-seat Panasonic Theatre - two major Toronto theatres - to Mirvish Productions.

Wings Theatre Company will stage Caprice, a new backstage musical about competitive show folk, beginning previews Sept. 11 and opening Sept. 17 in Greenwich Village.

The 1973 Harold Prince revision of Leonard Bernstein's Candide, which includes contributions by lyricist Stephen Sondheim and librettist Hugh Wheeler, will get a staging by Porchlight Music Theatre at Theatre Building Chicago in Chicago.

The 2008-09 Morgan's Cabaret season at the Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia will include five artists - two Philadelphia favorites and three artists who will make their debuts on the Prince cabaret stage.

American Theater Company in Chicago announced that Michael Thomas Newberry is its new executive director, and that David Cromer will direct the Chicago premiere of Celebrity Row, which has been added to its season.

Tomorrow Morning, a new musical about two relationships, by British composer, librettist and lyricist Laurence Mark Wythe, will receive its Chicago premiere under the direction of Tom Mullen, who also co-produces, Oct. 31-Dec. 7 at the Victory Gardens Theater Greenhouse.

The first 100 people in line for the Aug. 25 opening of the box office for 13, A New Musical at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre will be offered a $13 ticket price.

Cirque Dreams Jungle Fantasy, the family-friendly theatrical, acrobatic and musical adventure that evokes the exotica of untamed places, ends its limited Broadway engagement at the Broadway Theatre Aug. 24.