Tickets for the Cleveland Museum of Art's Gartner Auditorium Opening Nights Festival are free. They've built in some grassroots interest by booking local acts for what will surely be one of their most memorable gigs, but still it's worth mentioning: All but two of the remaining events in the two-month series are sold out.
You can still get free tickets for a screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1:30 p.m. April 10), and a concert featuring colorful singer-songwriter Baby Dee, the Opera Cleveland chorus and former CMA music curator Paul Cox leading an ensemble in Louis Andriessen's Workers Union (7 p.m., April 14). For information, call 216.421.7350 or go to clemusart.com.
Just like foodies shop for produce at the West Side Market, teachers can shop for field trips next month at PlayhouseSquare. The annual Fair on the Square offers 50 exhibitors showing teachers what they've got going on for the 2010-2011 school year. The usual standbys, like the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and Great Lakes Theater Festival, are there, but there are loads of smaller organizations too, including Youth At Risk Dancing (YARD) founder Bill Wade's Inlet Dance Theatre, the Progressive Arts Alliance and more. It's free, from 4-6 p.m. April 26. Register at playhousesqure.com.education.
Every two years, the LIT celebrates the best of Northeast Ohio literary writing with the Lantern Awards. The 2010 guidelines have just been announced. Northeast Ohio writers are invited to enter their published poetry, fiction, graphic novels, memoirs, creative nonfiction, journalism, playwriting or blog before the May 31 deadline. Work must have been published between January 2008 and May 2010. No self-published or vanity publications. Winners will be feted at All LIT Up Sept. 11 at PlayhouseSquare. For information, go to the-lit.org.
The Benny Andersson/Björn Ulvaeus/Tim Rice musical, Chess, with its radio hit "One Night in Bangkok," was a smash in the U.K., but a version modified for the U.S. flopped on Broadway. Victoria Bussert and her Baldwin-Wallace musical-theater students will give the U.S. premiere of the London version in their ongoing collaboration with PlayhouseSquare. Performances are 7:30 Friday, April 30; 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Saturday, May 1; and 7 p.m. Sunday, May 2, at the 14th Street Theatre (2037 E. 14th St., 216.241.6000, playhousesquare.com). Tickets: $10-$20.
