WildClaw Theatre has extended the deadline for submissions to Deathscribe 2009, its second annual festival of short radio plays. Entries are now due by July 31. "We are looking for genuinely scary, chilling, intelligent, suspenseful, horrific, imaginative or downright grotesque ten-minute radio scripts," says a release. "We put no restrictions on contestants as to content or tone, but keep in mind that we are a Horror Theatre. We take our horror seriously, and so should you."

Founded by British expat writer-director Charley Sherman, WildClaw specializes in stage versions of classic horror literature, and is aimed at an audience "craving strange journeys of dread, suspense, terror and wonder." Deathscribe is intended to evoke classic radio programs such as Lights Out and Inner Sanctum Mysteries. This year's five winning plays will performed in October at the Music Box Theatre by local actors and sound-effects artists.

Tracy Letts's Superior Donuts opens on Broadway October 1, at the Music Box Theatre--the same venue about to be vacated by Letts's Pulitzer- and Tony-winning August: Osage County. (August transferred to the Music Box on April 29, 2008, after starting its New York run December 4, 2007, at the Imperial. It had its world premiere here, at Steppenwolf Theatre.)

A comedy set in a run-down donut shop in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, Superior Donuts premiered at Steppenwolf last summer, under Tina Landau's direction.  Landau will also stage the New York show, which is being produced by Jeffrey Richards, Jean Doumanian, Steve Traxler, and Jerry Frankel--the team that brought August east. Previews for Superior Donuts begin September 16.

When was the last time you got excited about the future? Well, OK: Barack's election. But that was months ago and a special case. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was hot for the whole thing. The past was a dead letter as far as he was concerned. Whatever was young, fast, and on its way was for him--especially if it had sleek lines and a big engine. In 1909, he published the Futurist Manifesto, and set his movement-in-love-with-movement in motion. The result was an outpouring of Futurist experimentation in design and the arts. 

The Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago honors the centenary of Futurism--if that's not too much of a contradiction--with an evening that includes Massimiliano Finazzer Flory--"playwright, actor, writer, and the current Councillor for Cultural Affairs for the City of Milan"--reading various Futurist texts in the original Italian (printed translations will be provided). Also on the bill: saxophonist Riccardo Bianco playing "original futuristic music improvisations," and Futurism-inspired dance by Michela Lucenti. Fri 6/26 6 PM, Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago, 500 N. Michigan, 312-822-9545 to RSVP, www.iicchicago.esteri.it, free.

Playwright Doric Wilson, one of the pioneers of off-off-Broadway and gay theater, is coming to Chicago this week for the midwest premiere of his 1978 comedy A Perfect Relationship. Wilson will attend performances on Thursday and Friday, June 24 and 25, 8 PM at the Chicago Leather Archives & Museum, 6418 N. Greenview. He'll participate in Q&A sessions with the audience after both shows.

Wilson, 70, was a resident playwright at Caffe Cino, the legendary Greenwich Village coffeehouse and theater that helped launch the off-off-Broadway theater movement in the early 1960s, introducing new work by Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson, John Guare, Robert Patrick, William Hoffman, Tom Eyen, and Jean-Claude van Itallie. In 1969, Wilson participated in all three nights of the Stonewall riot, the event that launched the gay liberation movement. That same year, Wilson was a founding member of the Circle Repertory Company, one of New York's most esteemed off-Broadway theaters. In 1974, Wilson co-founded TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence), the first professional gay-centered theater company in New York. TOSOS gained attention with its productions of new and revived plays by the likes of Terrence McNally, Lanford Wilson, Martin Sherman, and Joe Orton, as well as Wilson. This year, Wilson received the Career Achievement in Professional Theatre Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, sharing the honor with avant-garde icon Judith Malina, co-founder of the Living Theatre.

"The only relationship I ever had," Wilson has written, "left me stumbling through the slush of 42nd Street on Christmas Eve of 1961, clutching Macy shopping bags crammed with his and my presents. Seems his lover (an entity previously unknown to me) had flown in from London as a holiday surprise. Never tried relationships again as I am susceptible to colds which makes stumbling through slush a bad idea. For me a one night stand is a long time commitment. Which in no way deterred me from writing about A Perfect Relationship." A Perfect Relationship is a coproduction of the People's Theater of Chicago and MidTangent Productions. Tickets for this Thursday and Friday's shows are $10.

Based on the four shows I saw, and what I heard from other festival-goers, A Very Funny Festival was a hit. The producers are hoping to make it an annual event, so hopefully the box office receipts will warrant a return next year.

Despite the presence of Zanies, Lakeshore Theater, Jokes & Notes, and several thriving amateur stand-up rooms, Chicago is still best known for improv and sketch comedy. A stand-up showcase with the terrific sort of talent on display at AVF last weekend would be a welcome and much-needed addition to the Chicago comedy scene.

After watching the all-white roster for Let Freedom Hum: An Evening of Comedy With Martin Short at the Vic on Thursday, I was curious to see how the place would be transformed for the predominantly African-American lineup of David Alan Grier: Comedy You Can Believe In, featuring Ralph Harris, Marina Franklin, Mark Curry, Bruce Bruce, Aries Spears, and Filipino-American Jo Koy. Sure enough, down came the ballroom backdrop and up came a brick building/alley one--an urban setting reminiscent of early Def Comedy Jam stages. Hip-hop, predictably, was the preshow soundtrack. (The showcase will air as a TV special on TBS Sun 6/28 at 10 PM.)

Stand-up audiences in Chicago are typically segregated--mostly black at Jokes & Notes on the south side, mostly Latino and Asian for Mikey O productions at Joe's on the north side or WATRA on the southwest side, and mostly white just about everywhere else--so it was great to see a truly diverse crowd at Grier's show. I sat between a mixed Latino-Indian couple and a Filipina, who was sitting next to a white couple and a middle-aged black woman who cheered throughout the show with "That's right"s and "Uh huh"s, like it was a Sunday sermon.

Overall I thought this bunch of comics was more entertaining than the one in Let Freedom Hum. They were more physical and personable. Grier came out following a video segment depicting him as a speaker at Obama's Grant Park rally on election day. Onstage, he read a very short set off a teleprompter, including an Obama joke: the President entered office looking like Denzel Washington, but "three months later he looked like Fred Sanford."

Actor-comedian Ralph Harris set the tone for the evening with his energy and enthusiasm. He was the first of three comics I heard during the fest who ripped the airline industry for its supertight security and cheap on-flight accommodations. His skin lotion confiscated by a security guard, he complained about his ashy skin: "My hands looked like powdered donuts. 'That ain't anthrax man, for real!'" And he did a hilarious impression of a bossy girlfriend who'd flinch at him like she was going to hit him.

Though she now lives in Harlem, Marina Franklin was born and raised in Chicago--as you could tell from the crowd's response when she came out. Sandwiched between the animated, loud Harris and Mark Curry, one of the most hyper, athletic comics I've ever seen, Franklin and her soft-spoken, mostly sedate style got practically buried. She's also a novice compared to the others on the bill, and her material wasn't nearly as sharp. Setups took too long, her timing was a touch late, and her delivery was unremarkable. Still, she did a promising impression of an irate black mother, and she told one of the few Michelle Obama jokes I've heard. On struggling to relate to the First Lady: "She don't look like she ever went through a slut phase."

Curry's character on Hanging With Mr. Cooper--the TV show he's probably best known for--doesn't prepare you for his stand-up. The tall, lean comedian burst onto the stage and never stopped moving. Impersonating a blind stripper, a crackhead sent to Iraq to help fight the war and reduce prison populations, and African runners at the Olympics who are bored with the competition, Curry gesticulated, danced, and paced his way through the longest set of the night. He also delivered one of the most acerbic commentaries I heard during the festival, criticizing the trendiness of adoption in Hollywood: "Oh my god, is that a Chanel purse?" "No, it's a black child." "I want one!"

Jo Koy was decent, doing newer, undistilled material about his 6-year-old son--though I doubt TBS will keep much of it for broadcast. His boy likes to pull his penis "down past his thigh" in front of his parents and their friends, and even colors it green, drawing eyes on the . . . well, you get the drift. Koy then pleaded with men to "pull out," explaining the consequences: "baby, no baby--broke, rich." 

I was most looking forward to Atlanta native Bruce Bruce, who didn't disappoint despite a short set (possibly because Curry went over). The massive comedian was quick to address his size, telling a guy in the front row, "I'm not gonna tip over." He griped about parents who don't discipline their kids. "If anybody got any kids," Bruce said, "beat 'em. Go home, wake 'em up and beat 'em." He also did a funny bit on African-American colloquialisms, noting how words get combined, like "gitcha something t'eat." "What is teat? I have no idea what teat is."

Aries Spears, best known for his versatile work on MADtv, closed the showcase with a very strong set. "What it do, Chicago?" he began with his gravelly DMX-like voice and macho manner. His mission in life, Spears said, is to "help white people." Picking up on Bruce's frustration with parents, Spears asked white parents: "Why don't y'all beat your kids?" But Spears's bit got theatrical, with a singing plantation slave and a parody of a new The Nanny featuring an abusive "nigger nanny." He then did some spot-on impressions: one of Arnold (brilliantly reducing the sound to a gargle) and three of Denzel Washington, hilariously imitating the actor's gruff, sexy, and all-business accents. The show ended with a simple "good night" from Grier after all the comics came back on stage for another round of applause.

The A Very Funny Festival: Just for Laughs stand-up showcase is well under way. Kanye West was a surprise musical guest at Ellen DeGeneres's Bigger Longer and Wider Show on Wednesday. (If you missed it, the revue was taped, and will air on TBS Saturday, 6/27, 10 PM.) Robert Smigel and Dino Stamatopoulos performed Wednesday and Thursday, screening their unaired TV Funhouse parody of Bozo's Circus and letting loose Triumph the Comic Insult Dog. (Who's meaner--Triumph or Lisa Lampanelli, who plays Saturday?)

Last night at the Vic I caught Let Freedom Hum: An Evening of Comedy Hosted by Martin Short, which was very funny indeed. The show was taped, too, and can be seen on TBS Friday 6/26, 10 PM. Rogers Park native and frequent Zanies performer John Roy opened with a solid set, riffing on the brutal Chicago weather (It's hard to be an environmentalist, he said, in a place where "Mother Nature is trying to destroy you") and being broke ("Let's see what the Iron Chefs can do with two Kraft singles, a can of Bud Lite, and a pickle.")

Roy was followed by a quick video segment of Martin Short, in character as Ed Grimley, interrupted in the middle of a sketch to change and run over to the Vic. He then entered the theater from the lobby and pranced to the stage--in the flesh--singing "All I Ask Is You Love Me," a number that could've come straight out of his hilarious celebration of celebrity narcissism Fame Becomes Me.

Short played to the Chicago crowd, joking that he'd just met Mayor Daley, who looked "so damn boyish I thought he was K.D. Lang." He mentioned he met his wife in Chicago--"that's true"--then launched into another musical number with the refrain, "Chicago makes me want to cheat on my wife." Before introducing the next comic, Short acknowledged writer-director-performer and Chicago native Harold Ramis in the crowd. Ramis was given a lifetime achievement award last Tuesday, at the first official event of the fest: a screening of Year One, which he directed.

Tom Papa, who's been opening for Seinfeld, was charismatic and one of the funniest performers of the night. (On suicides by people who've recently lost their fortunes: "They'd rather die than live like us.") Kathleen Madigan was the low point, going on and on about dealing with her aging parents.

I can't get enough of Jeremy Hotz's schtick. He apologized for looking the way he does--bald and big-nosed--and compared himself to Gonzo from the Muppets. Human males are so much uglier and hairier than human females, he said, why do they get together? "Men, if you're standing next to a naked woman and she looks like you, you've made a horrendous mistake." On a woman dealing with a man's body: "You could never handle testicles--it'd be like carrying a purse that didn't match the outfit."

Before introducing Hotz, Short and an unnamed guy had come out in kilts. The other guy lifted Short and "played" him as Short made bagpipe sounds to the tune of "Amazing Grace." Short then joked about Iran: "They have fraudulent voting and a fixed election--thank god that could never happen in Chicago.

Greg Giraldo's rambling, frequently misfiring delivery contrasted with Hotz's tight, efficient set. I was sitting next to Todd Jackson of dead-frog.com, and he told me Giraldo had done completely different material at a fest show the night before. Perhaps Giraldo was working on new stuff this time around. He did have a funny bit on buying feminine products that began, "My ex-wife doesn't like me to tell stories about her onstage, so let me just say this: I had a yeast infection." 

John Pinette was a great closing act. Like Hotz, he has a shtick--very animated, angrily loud at times--that gets laughs beyond the jokes. The rotund comic isn't afraid to talk about being bad at sports and loving to eat. On the outdoors: "Hiking is a walk that sucks. . . . When something goes wrong, it usually starts with, 'Well, we were hiking.'" On healthy foods: "Have you tried gluten-free bread? It needs gluten. I don't know what gluten is, but apparently it's delicious."

Short ended the night with a hasty goodbye, saying, "I think you've learned a lesson tonight--that it's better to have loved a Short than never to have loved at all." I still can't figure out why the show was called Let America Hum. Short and Hotz are Canadian, there were no patriotic themes in the routines, no American imagery onstage, and no musical numbers besides Short's. Any ideas?

Tonight at the fest: David Alan Grier, Jim Breuer, George Lopez, Russell Peters, Bob Odenkirk, and many others. Local stars include Patti Vasquez in the Very Funny Show, 2008 Best Of Chicago winner Michael Palascak in Chicago Stand-Up Run-Down, and T.J. Miller doing improv with Chuckle Sandwich in After Hours Reunion.

Sidenote: When I was leaving the Let Freedom Hum show, a guy at the door handed me a flyer for Robin Williams's Weapons of Mass Destruction tour, which stops at the Rosemont Theatre Fri-Sat, 10/2-10/3. Tickets for Williams's canceled March 27 show will be honored.

See the Reader sidebar for recommendations.

The Broadway production of  August: Osage County, the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member Tracy Letts, will close at the end of the month. It plays its final performance Sunday, June 28. The announcement comes a week after casting was announced for a touring production, which will come to Chicago's Oriental Theatre in February.

August: Osage County opened on Broadway December 4, 2007, following its world premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre the previous summer. The Broadway production--which won Tonys for best play, best director (Anna D. Shapiro), best actress (Deanna Dunagan), best featured actress (Rondi Reed), and best set design (Todd Rosenthal)--will have played 648 performances and 18 previews, surpassing other long-running non-musical hits such as A Man for All Seasons and Auntie Mame. (The record for a "straight" play on Broadway is held by Life With Father, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's stage version of Clarence Day's autobiographical stories of a Victorian family, which ran from November 8, 1939, through July 12, 1947, for an astounding 3,224 performances.)

Kristine Thatcher, a member of the Victory Gardens Theater Playwrights Ensemble, was recently canned as artistic director of the BoarsHead Theater in Lansing, Michigan. Thatcher learned on May 28 that the BoarsHead board would not renew her contract, which expires August 31. Reportedly, the theater decided it could not afford two top-level staffers, and Thatcher was considered more expendable than executive director John Dale Smith. There's a full account in the online arts guide Encore Michigan.

BoarsHead is one of three professional theaters in Michigan that recently announced they were letting go their top artistic executives. The state, not surprisingly, has been especially hard hit by the troubled economy, and BoarsHead has reportedly experienced a significant drop in financial support from foundations, businesses, and individuals.

Victory Gardens last premiered one of Thatcher's plays in 2000, when Dennis Zacek directed Voice of Good Hope, Thatcher's drama about pioneering African-American congresswoman Barbara Jordan. "Kristine Thatcher is that rare mainstream playwright who doesn't think her audience is stupid," wrote Reader critic Justin Hayford. Over the years, Thatcher has also proven herself a first-rate actor. Highlights of her stage career here range from playing Kate in a 1987 Taming of the Shrew at Oak Park Festival Theatre to co-starring with Michael Gross in Northlight Theatre's local premiere of A.R. Gurney's Later Life and appearing with her then-husband David Darlow in director Gary Griffin's staging of Jon Robin Baitz's Three Hotels at Apple Tree Theatre.