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"I write songs because I need to," said Yellow Springs singer/songwriter Dawn Cooksey. "I would write them even if I didn't play them for anyone."

It's therapy, she said, and she knows a little bit about that because she is a therapist and a licensed social worker. For a time, she worked for an agency in Hamilton, and through her contacts began performing for the Farmer's Market, which in turn led to her upcoming appearance at the Music Cafe on Tuesday, Dec. 23.

Born in Dayton, Cooksey lived several years in Austin, Texas, where she performed in the folk/alternative rock band Dik Dam Dyk. It was in the Austin open mic nights that she overcame her fear of performing her own songs.

"I didn't think anyone would care about my problems," she said. "I'd be a wreck for days before a gig, but I told myself I'd go every week until I'm not scared anymore.

"It took a long time."

Her songs tend to be sad, mad and everywhere in between, she said. "There have been a few exceptions, but I generally don't write when I'm happy and enjoying my life — which is most of the time.

"There are a few exceptions that blow me away, but happy songs tend to be kind of dorky anyway," she said.

She has a band, 68 South.

 Dawn Cooksey on MySpace

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Having played Bob Cratchit for two years prior to taking over the helm as the director for the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's production of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," Michael Evan Haney has been involved in what is now a Cincinnati tradition from the very beginning.

"It's really become a part of my life," he said. "I never thought I'd be involved in a play that would become a city-wide institution. When we started, we didn't even know there would be a second year, but even though it was not critically accepted, it was good in audience numbers."

Every year before rehearsals start, Haney goes back to the original novel and reads it — even though the adaptation uses nearly the same dialog word-for-word.

But he still looks forward to it every year with the goal of putting on a "crackerjack" performance.

"Other groups that do this often allow the quality to slide as the years go by," he said, "but that's just a sacrilege. Dickens is just a sacred as Shakespeare.

The key, he said, to keeping it real is to remember one thing.

"I wrote it at the top of my script: 'It's about Scrooge, stupid,'" Haney said. "The ones that are not successful are those that lose that focus."

For instance, some productions have made that into a lavish, show-stopping production number.

"But you have to remember Scrooge's involvement in the party," he said. "If he's not at the heart of it all, you're in trouble."

Local favorite Bruce Cromer will be humbugging as Ebenezer Scrooge for the fourth year.

"Bruce is a wonderful actor and his Scrooge is special because he never stops working on it," he said. "Each year, he finds something new and closer to the human soul of what Scrooge is.

"I call Scrooge 'the middle-age man's Hamlet' because he goes through just about every human emotion possible."

Also returning are Dale Hodges as the Ghost of Christmas Past/Mrs. Peake, Keith Jochim as Mr. Fezziwig/Ghost of Christmas Present, Todd Lawson as Young and Mature Scrooge, Gregory Procaccino as Jacob Marley/Old Joe, Andy Prosky as Bob Cratchit, Regina Pugh as Mrs. Cratchit, Wayne Pyle as Mr. Cupp/Percy, Tony Roach as Fred, Ron Simons as Mr. Sosser/Topper and Amy Warner as Mrs. Fezziwig/Patience.

"Almost everybody, from Scrooge on down, is a little richer this year and I see some nuances that I haven't seen before," Haney said. "It's like Shakespeare in that the text is so dense with so many levels that you can find all sorts of different ways to use them."

A lot of the production, however, remains exactly the same.

"It's a major decision to change anything," he said, "and you have to have meetings. We changed Marley's entrance a few years ago, and so had to change all the sound and technical cues."

how to go
WHAT: Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"
WHERE: Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park
WHEN: Through Dec. 30
COST: $31-$59
MORE INFO: www.cincyplay.com

Bruce Cromer as Ebenezer Scrooge/Sandy Underwood

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The Great Gatsby meets the Bard of Avon as the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company updates the comedy "Twelfth Night" to the Roaring Twenties.

Directory Jeremy Dubin said he hit on the idea over the summer while reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel of a man who re-invents himself so that he can work his way into the upper reaches of society.

"I was struck by the similarities between the characters," he said, "and of what comes out of trying to change your fundamental nature.

"And I felt that the scenes with the clowns Toby Belch and Feste have a vaudeville flavor that would work nicely in this kind of format."

The official synopsis:

After a shipwreck, Viola (Sara Clark) finds herself separated from her twin brother Sebastian and alone in the city of Illyria. Bereft at the loss of her brother and forced to make her own way in the world, she disguises herself as a man, "Cesario," and takes a job in the court of Duke Orsino (Rob Jansen). Orsino is hopelessly in love with the Lady Olivia (Kelly Mengelkoch), who has refused all of his previous advances. When Orsino sends "Cesario" to Olivia to plead his case one more time, Olivia falls instantly in love with "Cesario". Meanwhile, Viola has fallen in love with Orsino, but cannot express her desires without revealing her true identity. The classic love triangle becomes further complicated when Viola's twin brother, Sebastian (Kristopher Stoker), arrives in Illyria and is mistaken for "Cesario." As the romance unfolds, Olivia's drunken uncle, Sir Toby Belch (Matt Johnson), conspires with Olivia's servants Maria (Sherman Fracher), Feste (Christopher Guthrie) and Fabian (Billy Chace) to play a practical joke on Olivia's stuffy butler, Malvolio (Jim Hopkins).

"'Twelfth Night' has so many story elements that resonate with the Roaring Twenties," Dubin said. "Women were becoming more independent, dressing in a more masculine fashion, and taking work outside the home, just as Viola is forced to do.

"Prohibition created a black market in bootleg alcohol that led to a lot of outrageous behavior, a perfect opportunity for Shakespeare's drunken rascal Sir Toby Belch to make mischief. And the birth of jazz created a free-wheeling atmosphere where the desire for true love was often at odds with the social mandate to be the life of the party."

While it's become common practice to put Shakespeare's stories in more contemporary environments, Dubin points out that it seems Shakespeare did the same thing in his day, with plays like "Julius Caesar" making topical references to things that Caesar would not have known about — a striking clock, for instance.

"He worked within a certain visual vocabulary, using his contemporary references to place a character's social status to make it relatable to his audience," he said. "We have our visual vocabulary, too, and these plays are not museum pieces, but relevant, living theater."

The danger, then, comes when the production distracts from the script, to become cute or irrelevant to the action.

"It's a trial and error process," Dubin said. "We're careful not to force things into the text that aren't there. You want to make sure that you don't make it something it's not."

how to go
WHAT: "Twelfth Night" by William Shakespeare
WHERE: Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, 719 Race St., Cincinnati
WHEN: Through Jan. 4
COST: $26 adults; $22 seniors; $20 students
MORE INFO: (513) 381-2273; www.cincyshakes.com

photo: Rob Jansen and Sara Clark

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The title is not only long, but hilarious in its own right: “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant,” Know Theatre of Cincinnati’s off-the-hook holiday offering.

If only the production lived up to the promise.

The Pageant won an Obie Award for its off-Broadway premiere, with predictions of a cult phenomenon as a dead-pan musical rendering of the life of L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer who was fond of saying that his craft was a waste of time when a guy could get rich by starting his own religion. Then he started a religion and got rich (and I am confident that I will get a stern letter from a Scientologist for writing this — it’s happened before).

The premise, and the hoped-for charm, of the Pageant is that it uses the trappings of a church or school Christmas pageant, calling to mind ubiquitous “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” in telling this story, substituting Hubbard’s life and doctrine for that of Jesus.

But this show is not about making a pageant, but a parody of one, and as such falls victim to the imitative fallacy by being self-consciously, but not skillfully, exactly what it should only be pretending to be.

This is the second show of its kind in the Know season. But with “Reefer Madness,” with the premise of being a school production warning of the evils of marijuana, there was constant winking and nudging at the out-dated propaganda. When the character did something cheesy and over-the-top, we knew that it was a comedic choice (whether it was funny or not).

But the humor doesn’t work when the production doesn’t have something in it to let us know that they’re trying to sing off-key, rush their lines or hesitate on a cue. These things could happen with comedic intent and result, but there’s nothing here to clue us in that this isn’t just a poorly-cast and under-rehearsed show, but a parody of one. There’s no wow factor, no moment when we are awed by either the talent of the cast or the brilliance of the material. We may have had both, but the production seems so poorly-conceived and tossed-together that nothing stands out. Since we never see the man behind the curtain, never get a sense of his presence, we presume he’s not there. Consequently, the show doesn’t seem campy and silly, but pathetic.

how to go
WHAT: “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant” by Kyle Jarrow
WHERE: Know Theatre of Cincinnati, 1120 Jackson, Cincinnati
WHEN: Through Dec. 28
COST: $12
MORE INFO: (513) 300-5669; www.knowtheatre.com

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