Artistic Director

Being born to a banker father and a scientist mother wouldn't seem to guarantee success on the musical stage, but it's worked out pretty well for Kate Baldwin . Not that her dramatic intensity, comic timing and, above all, that angel-sweet soprano can be traced back to the lab or the boardroom. But from the start, her method of attack on her chosen field was derived directly from her parents' straightforward approach to theirs. Which makes Baldwin a cockeyed pragmatist, one of the less common...

Scott Tucker, the new artistic director of Washington's 170-member Choral Arts Society, launched his first major classical concert with the group on Sunday, conducting the singers and instruments at the National Presbyterian Church. Tucker's forces also included a chamber ensemble of 10 brass players, percussion and organ. Tucker charged into every item on the program, demonstrating he is clearly an ardent, driven champion fully in command at every moment. The chorus and orchestra rarely missed cues.

Olney Theatre Center's Jim Petosa has done a 180 and decided to stay on as artistic director. He had announced last June his intention to step down at the end of this year. "No one could be more surprised than I," Petosa jokes about his not-so-sudden change of heart. Olney's board of directors asked him early this year to reconsider, he says, given the arrival of new Managing Director Amy Marshall and the success of the current season ("1776," "Doubt," a re-imagined "Fiddler on the Roof")

Stars of Washington theater let loose after a big night at the Helen Hayes Awards after party on Monday at the JW Marriott in the District. 1. David Muse, artistic director for Studio Theatre, with Michael Kahn, artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company. 2. Daniel Savetta, recipient of the award for outstanding ensemble for a resident musical for "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" at Imagination Stage, with Zachary Gilbert, an Imagination Stage technician and designer.

Septime Webre, artistic director, Washington Ballet, Washington I love contrasts. I've got a wonderful taxidermied African springbok and other elements of nature set against this very artificial Lucite chai r. The space and vantage point where I sit highlight the natural and man-made worlds. It's a place for repose, to listen to music surrounded by all these creatures. Some I bought, and some were gifts. They're all over the house. The one that got away was in a Harrisburg junk shop: a four-by-eight-foot diorama with costumed...

The other shoe has dropped at the Washington National Opera: Christina Scheppelmann, the company's director of artistic operations, announced Thursday that she will step down at the end of November. She is taking on a new position, although she cannot announce what it is until her new employer makes it official at the end of the month. Scheppelmann was responsible for selecting repertories, directors and casts for the company. In short, she has been largely, if not exclusively, responsible for WNO's artistic profile in...

Vocal Arts DC, the 22-year-old recital series and the only one in the country devoted exclusively to vocalists, is hiring a new director. Effective Monday, Peter Russell replaces Gerald Perman, who founded the Vocal Arts Society in 1990, as artistic director. Perman will retain an advisory role as artistic director emeritus. With this move, the organization, which has been facing a stubborn decline in attendance in recent years, has at once secured a nationally regarded vocal expert and a favorite...

After a 7 ½-year run as the artistic director of Rep Stage, Michael Stebbins is stepping down to "continue on my . . . artistic journey again," he said. Stebbins, who considers himself "first and foremost an actor and director," is 47 years old. And not to be morbid or anything, but he was kind of thinking about mortality. "And, on the positive side, as an artist or an actor, . . . as long as we don't completely fall apart, we don't have to retire. We can play roles until we're crawling around,...

Olney Theatre Center's new artistic director is ready, in his words, "to raise some eyebrows. " Martin Platt, who began his new role at Olney on May 28, thinks next season's roster of plays will turn heads — which is exactly what he wants. Platt, 63, former co-director of the New York-based producing company Perry Street Theatricals, hopes for Olney "to have a stronger profile in the D.C./Baltimore theater world," he said. "I think it's slipped a bit. Programming has gotten very conservative.

After less than seven months in the job, Olney Theatre Center's artistic director Martin Platt is leaving. Alan Wade, a member of the theater's board of directors, is serving as interim artistic director while Olney undergoes a search for a permanent replacement. According to board president Jennifer Kneeland, Platt "wished to pursue his work with Perry Street Theatricals in New York. " She described the decision for Platt to leave as "mutual. " Kneeland said there are no plans to amend...

After a 7 ½-year run as the artistic director of Rep Stage, Michael Stebbins is stepping down to "continue on my . . . artistic journey again," he said. Stebbins, who considers himself "first and foremost an actor and director," is 47 years old. And not to be morbid or anything, but he was kind of thinking about mortality. "And, on the positive side, as an artist or an actor, . . . as long as we don't completely fall apart, we don't have to retire. We can play roles until we're crawling around, playing King Lear.

It was a lifetime ago that actress Tana Hicken rejected the obvious path leading to New York and the bland rags of ingenue parts. "I wanted to be an actor," Hicken says. "I wanted to do transformations. " The current stretch for Hicken, 68, is playing the 91-year-old socialist grandmother at the center of Amy Herzog's acclaimed drama " 4000 Miles ," now at the Studio Theatre. Washington theatergoers know full well she can do it: In a highly regarded career that began immediately...

When the Kennedy Center selected "Jason Invisible" to produce for young audiences, "we weren't looking for a play specifically about mental illness," said Betty Siegel, director of VSA and accessibility at the Kennedy Center. "We're trying to look at the experience of disability. When we make disability a part of what's going on onstage, we normalize it. " "There's been a lot of coverage of mental illness in a negative way in the news," said Siegel, especially in the coverage of mass...

There are last-minute changes, and then there are, well, really last-minute changes. When two cast members of Signature Theatre's "Crimes of the Heart" left the show for personal reasons, the theater considered recasting the roles but ultimately decided to replace the entire production with Jason Robert Brown's musical "The Last Five Years," keeping "Crimes" actors James Gardiner and Erin Weaver and director Aaron Posner onboard. Total time between the show swap and opening night: just over three weeks.

MOSCOW — When a star dancer unexpectedly confessed last week to plotting the acid attack against the Bolshoi Ballet's artistic director, it looked as if, with a smattering of applause for fast police work, the curtain would be closing on an episode that had horrified and absorbed the public. But this is Russia. On Tuesday, 300 Bolshoi dancers, crew members and administrators declared that they couldn't believe that Pavel Dmitrichenko could have committed the crime. They accused the police of pressuring him to...

THU 07 "Appropriated Texts" New York artist Brian Dupont paints words on metal. Opens Thursday. Through April 14. An opening reception will be held Saturday at 6:30 p.m. Adah Rose Gallery, 3766 Howard Ave., Kensington. 301-922-0162. www.adahrosegallery.com . Free. New African Films Festival The ninth annual roundup of films from Africa includes 11 titles, beginning with the Kenyan "Nairobi Half Life," by David "Tosh" Gitonga, about a young would-be actor who becomes immersed in a life of crime...

Art and commerce can make strange bedfellows in the world of nonprofit theater, especially in hard times. Olney Theatre Center's Jim Petosa knows that for sure. He has led the upper-Montgomery County landmark since 1994 and directed shows there well before that. Until the theater's financial travails of the past three years, he was able to diversify programming in fairly remarkable ways for a suburban venue that began life as a summer theater in 1938. On Petosa's watch, the sprawling 14-acre campus off Route 108 has...

MOSCOW — The January acid attack on Sergei Filin , the Bolshoi Ballet's artistic director, took a mysterious turn Tuesday after police detained a star dancer and two possible accomplices, without suggesting a motive or lodging charges. Pavel Dmitrichenko , a soloist who has danced with the Bolshoi for about 10 years, was detained along with two men with no apparent connection to the troupe. In a statement from the Interior Ministry, investigators said they were...

MOSCOW — Russian police on Wednesday began to outline the plot that resulted in an acid attack on Sergei Filin , the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, a story of temperamental artists, professional jealousy and possibly a woman scorned. Pavel Dmitrichenko, a 29-year-old Bolshoi star who was detained Tuesday , confessed Wednesday to the crime, said Maxim Kolosvetov, a Moscow police spokesman. "I organized this attack," Dmitrichenko, with dark circles under his eyes and looking slightly...

MOSCOW — The January acid attack on Sergei Filin , the Bolshoi Ballet's artistic director, took a mysterious turn Tuesday after police detained a star dancer and two possible accomplices, without suggesting a motive or lodging charges. Pavel Dmitrichenko , a soloist who has danced with the Bolshoi for about 10 years, was detained along with two men with no apparent connection to the troupe. In a statement from the Interior Ministry, investigators said they were...