Cincinnati's award-winning young people's playwright Kathryn Schultz Miller is going to Scotland. And Montana. It does sound strange, she says, laughing, but she's been commissioned to write a play for high school students about Scottish immigrants who married American Indians when they settled in the west.

        “A book was written about Scots Indians and it was a best-seller,” Mrs. Miller says.

        Scotland wanted a play, Ohio Arts Council suggested Mrs. Miller, soon she goes to Montana to research. She'll go to Scotland next spring to write, returning for rehearsals next summer — “during the Edinburgh Festival!”

        More playwrights: Local writers are two of the three winners in the ninth annual one-act competition at Fitton Center for Creative Arts in Hamilton.

        Cincinnati resident Sally Domet's Blowout is about a hearing-impaired, middle-aged woman seeking help with a flat tire.

        Bill Hilsmier of Hamilton imagines love won and lost during a search for a vintage car in The Lincoln Zephyr.

        The winning scripts will be presented as readers theater at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. next Sunday by the Mad Anthony Theatre Company at the Fitton. Tickets: $12, students $5. Reservations and information: 863-8873.

        • On Tuesday, Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative will stage a reading of Charles McClinon's The Two-Sided Mirror in conjunction with the Midwest Regional Black Theatre Festival.

        Mirror is the drama of a young African-American man looking back on his childhood eating disorder. It will be read at 7:30 p.m. in the Aronoff Center's Fifth Third Bank Theater. Admission: $5.

        • Kevin Barry will have his latest, theboysroom, read by Know Tribe at Gabriel's Corner at 8 p.m. May 3-4. Topic is sure to whip up some response, since it defends a middle-aged guy with a hankering for adolescent boys. Chris Kramer and Eric Yellin will perform the reading.

        Reviews are in: New York's major critics ho-hummed Susan (The Producers) Stroman's revival of Oklahoma! but the two things they did like were bad guy Jud Fry and everybody's favorite lovelorn cowboy Will Parker, played by CCM musical theater grad Justin Bohon.

        The Associated Press said: “. . . among the best is a young man named Justin Bohon whose Will Parker lifts the show out of its first act doldrums. Whoever thought such a lesser ditty as “Kansas City” could raise the roof?”

        Variety raved: “There is, happily, a real find among the supporting players, a lanky lad named Justin Bohon who steals pretty much every scene he's in . . . Ruddy cheeked and limber of limb, Bohon exudes the kind of fresh, honest ardor that the show could use a lot more of.”

        Symposiums, auditions: Ovation Theatre Company presents a “Saturday Symposium” for actors 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Students of all ages — middle-school through middle-age is Ovation education director Gina Cerimele-Mechley's playful suggestion — are welcome.

        Learn stage makeup, stage combat, audition techniques, movement and puppetry and more. University of Cincinnati's terrific vocal expert Rocco Dal Vera will lead a session on voice, speech and theater (2 p.m.) and you can join me to discuss theater and the media (3 p.m.)

        The symposium will take place in the rehearsal room below the Aronoff's Fifth Third Bank Theater. Admission: $5 per seminar (except theater and the media, which is free.)

        You can register in advance or at the door ($30 all day). Questions go to Blake Bowden at 253-7920.

        Ms. Mechley will be directing Mr. Bowden's adaptation of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,which will open the Ovation 2002-03 season Oct. 25-Nov. 2.

        Auditions are set from 6 to 11 p.m. April 22-23 at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music Room 4755. Be prepared for cold readings and movement. To schedule an audition, call 236-8997.

        Stealing women: Annie Fitzpatrick reteams with Peggy Cosgrave for another go around in Carter Lewis' Women Who Steal. A hit for Ensemble Theatre, when the originally cast actress had to bow out, Ms. Fitzpatrick was tapped to step in. They'll move on to Florida Stage next month.

        In College Hill: Diane Germaine rounded up work by Meredith Monk, Nina Simone and Astor Piazzolla (and a lot more) plus a dozen local performance artists, including Holly Price, Rachel James and Bill Donnelly, for the full-length Didi . . . a life continuing through next weekend at College Hill Town Hall, 1805 Larch Ave.

        Ms. Germaine, who created the work (and also directs, choreographs and performs), describes Didi as “an interdisciplinary spoken word and dance project in three acts.”

        Translating art-speak into English, Didi follows a character from child to adulthood and the three acts run less than two hours.

        Ms. Germaine says she never was nicknamed Didi, but adds, “all work is kind of biographical. Some of them are my stories, but embellished to be entertaining.”

        She started writing several years ago and credits Women Writing for (a) Change with helping the process. During last year's Performance. Time. Art. series at College Hill Town Hall, she experimented with combining theatrical scenes with dance. “People were identifying with it and I decided to expand it,” she says.

        Didi will have an excerpted performance, intended for children, at 2:30 p.m. today. It will include a post-performance conversation with the artists. Full performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Reservations and information: 591-1222.

        Festival continues: The Midwest Regional Black Theatre Festival continues this week with several shows by local artists and one out-of-town entry:

        Sara Scott will debut her fresh-from-the-word-processor one-woman show Flava of the Month, 3 p.m. Saturday at Cincinnati Museum Center's Reakirt Auditorium.

        “I had this idea about three years ago,” says Ms. Scott. It “rose out of experiences from everywhere I've lived and performed — people I've met along the way.”

        Ms. Scott will parade a variety of characters through the restroom of a hot L.A. nightclub: a cross dresser, a hip-hop diva, an Alabama cheerleader, a “pimp daddy landlord” and a Jewish mother among them.

        After its first performance in Cincinnati, “I'm taking it back to L.A. where it will be part of an evening called Ebony, Ivory and Jade that begins in May,” Ms. Scott says.

        Festival organizers will take a brief breather but fest producer Don Sherman expects to announce the first producing season of Cincinnati Black Theatre Company by June. The new community theater's calendar will include four adult and two children's shows.

        Location TBA, but Mr. Sherman says that starting out as a resident company in the Arts Consortium “would be a perfect fit, as I see it.”

        Although that conversation won't take place until after the festival, Mr. Sherman shouldn't have any trouble getting a hearing. He's married to Arts Consortium assistant executive director Paula Sherman.

        Reminder: Cincinnati City Council's arts and culture committee will meet 4:30 p.m. Thursday in Council Chambers at City Hall with Councilman Jim Tarbell presiding. The meeting will be devoted to input from members of the arts community (but keep each comment to three minutes).

        Anyone who needs special equipment (video set-up, slide projector, etc.) should contact Ron Wahl immediately at 352-6228.

        Contact Jackie Demaline by phone: 768-8530; fax: 768-8330; e-mail: jdemaline@enquirer.com.

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