Melissa Reeves built on the idea, suggesting a Habitat for the Arts project. She also advocated “theater buddies” — “grab kids and take them to the theater.”

        Weston Gallery director Dennis Harrington suggested tapping into the 80,000-strong downtown work force by having an annual arts day sponsored by major corporations. Over a long lunch break, downtown workers could get to know the arts.

        Gerald Ceccho said Cincinnati needs nothing less than “a Marshall Plan for the smaller arts” earning the biggest cheer yet from a capacity crowd of 160 in the Aronoff's Fifth Third Bank Theater. “Arts aren't trickle-down,” he chided. “They're from the ground up.”

        Cathy Springfield (head of Xavier University's theater department) and D. Lynn Meyers (Ensemble Theatre artistic director) moonlight as arts activists and called the meeting.

        They would have been happy with 60 people at the town meeting on the arts. It is, after all, the Christmas shopping season and a Monday night.

        During the days before the town meeting they were already referring to their hope for “a citizens' alliance.” As they looked over the standing-room-only crowd, their dream was starting to feel like reality.

        “All those people! And there were really good ideas,” Ms. Meyers says.

        She and Ms. Springfield spent the rest of the week identifying task forces, including communications and government affairs, that will move forward through winter. Didn't make the meeting? You're still invited to participate. Call Ms. Springfield at 745-3578.

        The city's arts power brokers were, as usual, absent when it comes to the concerns of groups beyond the Big Eight. But there's no arguing that for a room packed with vocal, enthusiastic artists and arts supporters, the time is now for action on a long list of great ideas.

        Most of the very good ideas put forward Monday aren't even new; they were the dreams of the regional cultural plan.

        The time is now.

        The regional cultural plan, released two years ago, laid a solid groundwork with research that is still fresh. Add to that a new City Council committee on arts and cultural tourism. Committee chair Jim Tarbell was very much in evidence Monday night.

        In 2002, the road for a fresh troop of arts advocates should be, if not easy, easier.

        And what good ideas people brought to the microphones Monday night: arts corridors to connect the suburbs with the urban core; telling the city planning department that arts and culture must be part of neighborhood master plans, starting with Over-the-Rhine; visual and performing artist collaborations; streamlining the pathway of volunteer non-profits through city bureaucracy.

        The arts activists took their first step Monday, signing a letter supporting the Emery Theatre as it faced scrutiny in the city budget process later in the week. Mr. Tarbell took it with him when he left the meeting, to hand-deliver to the mayor.

        The next arts town meeting, which will include committee updates, is scheduled for March 11 in Xavier University's new theater.

        Humana lineup: The 2002 lineup for the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville looks like a potential step up in quality from the last several years.

        Three of the six full-length works on the schedule are by proven playwrights — and no entry from “Jane Martin” (long assumed to be former artistic director Jon Jory's nom de plume) now that Mr. Jory has departed. Go figure.

        On the basis of 2000 festival hit Big Love, the return of Charles Mee with Limonade Tous Les Jours is welcome news. Anne Bogart, who has been a festival staple in recent years, will return in 2002 with Score, the Leonard Bernstein theatrical imagining that is also getting play at the Wexner Center in Columbus in March.

        Tina Howe (Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances and many more) offers a contemporary fantasy in which an artsy New York couple get a visit from Rembrandt in Rembrandt's Gift. Another splendid playwright, Marlene Meyer, promises a darkly comic look at The Mystery of Attraction.

        Finer Noble Gases by hot young playwright Adam Rapp is an existential comedy about what happens to a pair of musician slackers when their TV goes off. Get a preview of Mr. Rapp's work in February when Cincinnati Shakespeare opens the regional premiere of his Nocturne.

        A.M. Sunday by new voice Jerome Hairston spans five tense days in an interracial couple's life.

        Humana will again do a program of three 10-minute plays and promises a dramatic anthology by 15 playwrights and a multi-writer project inspired by technology and live performance. Details to come.

        The festival will run from March 3-April 13. Tickets go on sale Feb. 8. For information and reservations call (800) 428-5849 or visit Actors Theatre's Web site at www.actorstheatre.org.

        Bridal bash: Anderson Township's Rich Neumann is inviting you to a wedding, one that's been taking place every Saturday night at One Riverboat Row in Newport since Thanksgiving.

        It's Joey and Maria's Comedy Italian Wedding, not to be confused with long ago off-Broadway hit Tony and Tina's Wedding, at least not too much. “If they're Hertz, we're Avis,” Mr. Neumann says.

        The upgrade includes the Chicken Dance to the standard-issue Tarantella and Macarena. Mr. Neumann promises much opportunity for audience participation and “a great Italian buffet” ($49.50 for dinner and show; tax, gratuity and cash bar extra.)

        He saw the show in San Diego last June and snapped up the right to produce it in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Greater Cincinnati will be the flagship, but over the next “12 to 18 to 24 months” he sees potential for opening the show in Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Lexington, Louisville.

        There are four more shows from the same production company, including Maria's Bachelorette Party, Joey and Maria's 25th Anniversary Party and, for a change of theme, Jimmy and Jenny's Wacky Western Wedding and The Wake of Matty O'Malley.

        Mr. Neumann wouldn't mind if this wedding runs as long as the Boston version: 11 years. “Cincinnati is an unusual market,” acknowledges Mr. Neumann, who has lived here for 15 years. “But if you have a good production and are relatively aggressive without offending anybody, I think it can work.”
        Contact Jackie Demaline by phone: 768-8530; fax: 768-8330; e-mail: jdemaline@enquirer.com.
       

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