A little bit of New York theater comes to Cincinnati this week with The December Project, playing Thursday through next Sunday at Ensemble. The theater's intern acting company puts together a collection of responses to 9/11; the centerpiece will be Nine Ten, a one-act by playwright Warren Leight (Side Man).

        Nine Ten was conceived as part of The 24 Hour Plays benefit for the New York victims of 9/11. The evening also will include “A Storm Is Coming” by Ass Ponys guitarist Bill Alletzhauser.

        The intern company wrote, directs and appears in the rest of the evening's program.

        Curtain time is 10 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday (following Pinocchio) and 7 p.m. Sunday. Tickets $10.

        Ensemble has scheduled its annual edition of artistic director D. Lynn Meyers' Expectations of Christmas, a collection of holiday season facts, stories and songs at 7 p.m. Dec. 17. Tickets: $10. Proceeds benefit Tender Mercies and Hays Elementary School.

        The kids coat drive at ETC continues. When you come to a show (including The Adventures of Pinocchio) bring new or slightly used children's coats to be donated to agencies and schools in Over-the-Rhine.

        Call the box office at 421-3555 for information and/or reservations to all of the above.

        Meeting Monday: Reminder: town meeting on the arts scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday at the Aronoff's Fifth Third Bank Theater (Seventh and Main streets). Bring ideas.

        Budget deadline: While we're on the subject of arts advocacy, it looks like the city of Cincinnati's new budget will be ready for a vote this week. If you haven't already gotten in touch with council's budget committee chairman John Cranley (john.cranley@rcc.org or call 352-5303) to tell him why it's important that the arts allocations budget remains intact, there's no better time. Feel free to be creative. It is the arts, after all.

        Wade's "Monologues': Still no word on who's taking center stage the first two weeks of The Vagina Monologues, but week three it will be Kathy Wade, best-known as a singer and educator (Learning Through Art.) The show opens Jan. 1 at the Aronoff's Jarson-Kaplan; Ms. Wade's stint begins Jan. 15. Call 241-7469 for ticket info.

        Man behind "Marley': Playwright Tom Mula will come to town late this month to get a first look at his Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol expanded from a one-man show to a work for a chamber ensemble of actors. It's a bona fide audience-pleaser for Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival.

        Marley, whichcontinues through Dec. 31, grounds itself to the essentials of Carol,then takes flight to tell another, even spookier tale of redemption, that of Jacob Marley. It's an unexpected pleasure.

        Mr. Mula has a long history with A Christmas Carol, which to some degree accounts for how well he works with it. He played Ebenezer Scrooge at Chicago's Goodman Theatre for seven years, but long before that he played Jacob Marley at age 14 in the Little Theatre on the Square in Sullivan, Ill. “I wore my neighbor's tire chains,” he says, laughing.

        He traveled here from Chicago in mid-November to take a look at Marley rehearsals and took time out to explain the show's inspiration. His first year at the Goodman, friends brought their kids to the show, “and the 10-year-old said that Marley got a raw deal, that at least Scrooge was given the chance to escape his fate.”

        Hmmm, thought Mr. Mula, who did have that longtime attachment to the character.

        The ideas came together for the next couple of years “and then Marley leapt out of the computer. It was a story that wanted to be told, and I was the lucky guy at the typewriter.”

        It was published as a book in 1995, but Marley stayed under his skin, and he decided to try it as a one-man show. He switched from Scrooge in the Goodman's large theater to Marley in its studio for two holiday seasons, winning some writing awards along the way.

        Mr. Mula, acting and teaching acting at Columbia College in Chicago, had never taken himself seriously as a writer. Now he's serious, at least as serious as his “pugnacious sense of humor” lets him be.

        Bob Almighty debuted last summer in Wisconsin. “It's about an octogenarian in a nursing home who thinks he's God and sometimes he's right,” Mr. Mula says. He's shopping it around as he's contemplating what's next. “There are a couple of good beginnings in the computer.”

        Marley plays at 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the festival, 719 Race St., through Dec. 30. There is a festive New Year's Eve performance scheduled. Call the box office at 381-2273.

        Boredom on 34th Street: David Sedaris, aka Macy's elf Crumpet, on the holiday season at the world's biggest department store: “The Magic Window is really boring. I'm supposed to stand around and say, "Step on the Magic Star and look through the window and you can see Santa!'

        “I said that for a while and then I started saying, "Step on the Magic Star and you can see Cher!' And people got excited. Some people in the other line, the line to sit on Santa's lap, went wild and cut through the gates so that they could stand on my Magic Star.

        “Then they got angry when they looked through my Magic Window and saw Santa rather than Cher.

        “What did they honestly expect? Is Cher so hard up for money that she'd agree to stand behind a two-way mirror at Macy's?”

        It can only be the regional premiere of the NPR commentator's Santaland Diaries, what you'd definitely call an alternative holiday entertainment. New Edgecliff performs Diaries Dec. 13-23 at the Aronoff's Fifth Third Bank Theater. 241-7469.

        Wrap up the arts: Only 16 shopping days left till Christmas. Let me make it easy for you. Give the gift of the arts.

        You can do your patriotic duty and spend — but when you spend on the arts, you're spending your money here, where you live and where the local economy needs the boost. When you put your dollars in the arts for tickets or a membership,the institution you give to will be one that gives back to the community.

        No worrying about sizing. The great thing about the arts is that you can custom fit your gift.

        There's The Vagina Monologues for your feminist friends, Paavo Jarvi at Music Hall (and a late-night dinner at Nicola's for Paavo-spotting) for music lovers and the incurably hip. Your retro chums will no doubt appreciate tickets to Mamma Mia! and a CD of ABBA's greatest hits.

        Buy sitar (or guitar) lessons or a lecture series at Cincinnati Museum Center. Send your middle-school-age child to Shakespeare camp next summer. You couldn't do better for a gift that keeps on giving for a student of any age than a membership in Enjoy the Arts.

        Even if you missed Final Friday or the annual Spring Street Sale, stroll Fourth Street galleries or through the studios in the Pendeleton for an artful gift. DIVA brochures, available at museums and downtown galleries, have a handy map.

        Make a weeknight date with a theater-loving friend and take a run at half-price day-of-show tickets at Playhouse. (Don't hold out hope for the Shelterhouse.)

        Put together an Edge sampler — a Playhouse alteractive ticket, a concert by Contemporary Dance Theatre, Nocturne at Cincinnati Shakespeare.

        All the time you save from prowling the malls can be put to happy use at a holiday show. (And this spring you'll want to do your 2002 Christmas shopping early by stocking up on tickets to The Lion King.)

        Inside "Romeo': Opera historian Charles Parsons and Cincinnati Shakespeare artistic director Jasson Minadakis will discuss Romeo and Juliet, both Shakespeare's original and Charles Gounod's adaptation as part of Cincinnati Opera Guild's Opera Rap lecture series.

        The free program, at 7 p.m. Wednesday at All Saints Episcopal Church, Parkman Place at Grand Vista Avenue, Pleasant Ridge, will include excerpts performed by members of the festivals Young Company. (No, they won't be singing.) Information: 744-3511.

        Marked man: Middletown actor William Morse will spend part of his December break as a speech and theater professor at Sinclair College doing a one-night stand as Mark Twain in Puerto Vallarta.

        The Dec. 13 performance will benefit America-Mexico Foundation scholarships. Cincinnatians may remember his Twain from the first Tall Stacks in 1988.

        E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/demaline

Instrument would bring joy to musical 11-year-old girl
DEMALINE: ETC interns remember 9/11
Ballet stars to develop NKU dance program
Clarinetist shines in difficult works
KIESEWETTER: Americans not loading plates with TV 'comfort food'
'Millionaire' no longer ABC's pot of gold
Crenna searches for essence of Reagan
Sept. 11 attacks extend wedding shopping season
Gifts ease life for people with disabilities
Golfer might add yoga to his bag
Mason woman admits Santa Claus dependence
MARTIN: Bring eclectic cookbooks off the back burner
Beers without buzz
Hot drinks stirring for cold days
Creed has weathered plenty of criticism
Merchant not afraid to show more soul
Serious Oscar campaigning heats up