OPENING
THE CHILDREN'S HOUR | Our Place Theatre Project's ninth annual African-American Theatre Festival continues with Lillian Hellman's 1934 play about a girl's boarding school and its two headmistresses. When one unhappy student runs away and is about to be sent back, she gets off the hook by declaring that the headmistresses are having a lesbian affair. Our Place artistic director Jacqui Parker is at the helm. | BCA Plaza Theatre, 539 Tremont St, Boston | 617.933.8600 | June 6-13 | Curtain 7:30 pm Wed-Thurs | 8 pm Sat | 3 pm Sun | $15-$35
DEAR MISS GARLAND | Local hero Kathy St. George channels her favorite movie star ("We are exactly the same height, 4'11" ") in the world premiere of a one-woman show that she wrote with Scott Edmiston. Musical director Jim Rice heads the seven-piece band. | Stoneham Theatre, 395 Main St, Stoneham | 781.279.2200 | June 4-28 | Curtain 7:30 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 4 + 8 pm Sat | 2 pm Sun | $40; $35 seniors; $20 students
DREAM OF LIFE | Imaginary Beasts presents Federico García Lorca's unfinished drama Play Without a Title, in which "revolution breaks out in the streets, and in the theater a director interrupts a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream to demand that the actors and the audience invite the revolution inside." The piece is accompanied by García Lorca's "highly experimental 'diálogos,' including the rarely seen Buster Keaton Takes a Walk. Passionate, surreal and personal, the diálogos unfold like waking dreams and exemplify Lorca's conviction for "impossible" theater." | BCA Plaza Black Box Theatre, 539 Tremont St, Boston | 978.500.5553 | June 12-27 | Curtain 7:30 pm Wed-Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 4 pm [June 27] + 8 pm Sat | 4 pm Sun | $18; $13 students, seniors
FEATHERS ON MY ARMS . . . ZORA NEALE FLYING HIGH AND BESS THE BRAVE | Our Place Theatre Project's ninth annual African-American Theatre Festival concludes this pair of one acts by Our Place artistic director Jacqui Parker, the first about Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston, the second about Bessie Colman, the first African-American female pilot. | BCA Plaza Theatre, 539 Tremont St, Boston | 617.933.8600 | June 12-13 | Curtain 8 pm Fri | 4 pm Sat | $15-$35
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST | Wellesley Summer Theatre updates Oscar Wilde's essay on the importance of being something other than the offspring of a handbag to the Jazz Age, where Oscar himself would surely have had a swell time had he still been around. "Critically acclaimed members of the WST company" are promised for the cast; Nora Hussey and Valerie von Rosenvinge direct. | Wellesley Summer Theatre, Schneider Hall, Wellesley College, Wellesley | 781.283.2000 | June 4-28 | Curtain 7:30 pm Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 3 + 8 pm Sat | 3 pm Sun | $20; $10 students, seniors
KATHY GRIFFIN LIVE | She's been an Emmy winner for Outstanding Reality Program (Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List), a Seinfeld character (stand-up wanna-be Sally Weaver, who gets to talk about how Jerry is the Devil), and a co-host of the Billboard Music Awards, and she's also had her own HBO one-hour special, A Hot Cup of Talk, so Kathy Griffin should have plenty to talk about when she comes to town. | Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont St, Boston | 866.348.9738 | June 12-13 | Curtain 7:30 pm | $45-$75
PINTER'S MIRROR | Shakespeare and Company offers Elizabeth and Malcolm Ingram in three one-act plays. | Shakespeare & Company, Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, 70 Kemble St, Lenox | 413.637.3353 | June 11–August 2 | Curtain various times | $16-$34; $11-$29 students, seniors; June 13 $25-$48
PLAYWRIGHTS' PLATFORM ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF NEW PLAYS | Actor, director, and playwright Chris King produces this 37th annual festival of new plays. On the bill for week #1: Kelly Dumar, Hortense Gerardo, George Matry Masselam, Scott Welty, Judith Plummer, Lynne S. Brandon, Ludmilla Anselm, William Miller, Ron Radice, and Peter M. Floyd. | Boston Playwrights' Theatre, 949 Comm Ave, Boston | 866.811.4111 | June 11-20 | Curtain 8 pm Thurs-Sat | 3 pm Sun | $17; $14 students, seniors
SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO AND DUCK VARIATIONS | The American Repertory Theatre's "Sex, Satire, Romance, and Ducks" tribute to David Mamet concludes with this double bill of early Mamet one-acts. In the first, Chicago couple Danny and Deborah are perverse enough to want to move in together, but that'll leave Danny's friend Bernard and Deborah's friend Joan feeling left out. In the second, old-timers George and Emil are on a bench watching a flock of ducks and telling stories about ducks, even though they don't know duckshit about ducks. | Zero Arrow Theatre, Mass Ave + Arrow St, Cambridge | 617.547.8300 | June 11-28 | Curtain 7:30 pm Tues-Thurs | 8 pm Fri | 2 + 8 pm Sat | 2 + 7:30 pm Sun | $39; $25 stool
