Arts & Culture for Dummies returns! When the series - which answers questions like "I can do that - why is it art?" - debuted in January it was an immediate sell-out.

Enjoy the Arts/START begins new monthly sessions July 14 and 21. On one Wednesday a month, each class meets at a different arts venue at 5:30 p.m. for meet/greet/eat and at 6:15 p.m. embarks on an up-close look at organizations including Cincinnati Opera, Contemporary Dance Theatre, Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival and Architreks Downtown Architecture. Each of the courses has a different schedule.

Enjoy the Arts' Joelle Daniel calls Dummies "cultural-411 parties." She promises a new Dummies series for January 2005 and says the series will continue, "until there are no more Dummies left in Cincinnati!"

"Tuition" is $75. For reservations and information call Enjoy the Arts at 621-4700 or visit www.etastart.com by July 14.

Irish theater

New Gate, which has been evolving as a theater company specializing in Irish repertory, announces a formal, two-play season for 2004-2005 beginning with A Child's Christmas in Wales playing Nov. 12-20 at Columbia Performance Center.

Chicago coming

According to Playbill, the Chicago tour, opening the Fifth Third Bank Broadway in Cincinnati 2004-2005 season at the Aronoff Center from Sept. 21-Oct. 3, has a cast in place.

A brash musical that takes a dark look at media and celebrity, Bianca Marroquin and Brenda Braxton play Roaring Twenties murderesses Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, respectively. Gregory Harrison is Billy Flynn and Carol Woods is the matron.

International audience

St. Ursula Academy's Ensemble Theatre is readying for their trip to Scotland next month, the first high school troupe from Cincinnati ever to be invited to participate in Edinburgh's International Fringe Festival.

But first they'll perform a benefit preview of A Piece of My Heart, the show they're taking to Edinburgh, on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. with a reception before. Tickets $20. For more information, call director Dianna Davis at St. Ursula, 961-3410.

Summer trip

Joseph McDonough, whose world premiere One opened the Shelterhouse 2003-2004 season at Playhouse in the Park, heads off for a residency at New River Dramatists, the prestigious North Carolina play lab later this month. Among the other invitees is Stephen Adly Guirgis, hot author of Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train and Our Lady of 121st Street.

McDonough, who contributes theater reviews to The Enquirer, will be the Helen Weinberger Center playwright-in-residence at University of Cincinnati in spring, 2005. He'll teach and have a workshop of a new script.

Jonathan Kamholtz, Weinberger Center director, says McDonough "is the preeminent playwright in town and we want him to think of University of Cincinnati as his home."

Professor's play

University of Cincinnati associate professor Linda Przybyszewski has collaborated with the Kentucky Historical Society on a short play about former Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan.

A Kentucky slave owner descended from a family of slave owners, Harlan (1833-1911) was the lone dissenter in an 1896 "equal but separate" case.

Przybyszewski and Mike Thomas, museum theater director for the Historical Society were commissioned by the Kentucky Bar Association to develop the play, which was performed last week at the association's state conference. It will be performed on future dates to be determined at the historical society in Frankfort.

Workshops invitation

Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative invites local playwrights to submit up to two plays for consideration for its second year of developmental workshops at the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art and the Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati.

Northern Kentucky University theater department faculty member Sam Zachary will head the selection committee. Playwrights must be available to work with directors and actors (dates to be determined). All participants will receive a stipend.

Send entries to: Chuck Wente, Executive Director, Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative, 425 E. 4th St., Newport, Ky. 41071 by Sept. 12. Notification will be made by early November.

For more information, call Wente at (859) 291-6996.

E-mail: jdemaline@enquirer.com