Highlighted by comedy, the JLT 2008-09 season, will begin on August 20-24, 2008 with the light-hearted musical, Annie Get Your Gun. Irving Berlin's classic is the "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better" love story between legendary sharpshooters Annie Oakley (nee Phoebe Ann Mosey of Ohio) and Frank Butler, who became her husband/manager/agent. According to Bess Edwards, her grand niece, Mosey learned to shoot while hunting game for her widowed mother and her brother and sisters. After she and Butler married, she began to tour the vaudeville circuit as Oakley and star in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Her expertise in shooting opened shooting ranges and matches all across the US and Europe to female competitors.

Directed by Ann Lile, the stage version, a show within a show, features such hits as There's No Business Like Show Business, Doin'What Comes Naturally, I Got the Sun in the Morning and The Girl That I Marry.

Monday [Harry Monday, that is] Always Leads to Murder, directed by Chet Fritz, will be presented from October 15-19, 2008. The Sam Spade wannabe is back for the third time on his latest case--trying to solve a 20-year-old murder in this wise-cracking, clue-strewn mystery, while at the same time writing a play about his career.

The holiday comedy presented December 10-14, 2008 is called The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society's Production of "A Christmas Carol". One of a series of plays by David McGillavray and Walter Zerlin Jr., this one like the others follows the missteps and misadventures of a women's amateur theatre troupe, and is satire at its best. It will be directed locally by Jim Lile.

Directed locally by Bill Perry, Johnny Guitar the Musical is scheduled for March 25-29, 2009. Based on a 50s western starring Joan Crawford, it tells the story of a sultry saloon keeper and the town's tycoon, her jealous nemesis. Enter a handsome stranger with a secret past and the scene is set for a hilarious show-down.

The Late Christopher Bean directed locally by Carolyn McGowan, is the final production of the season to be performed May 27-31, 2009. The plot thickens when the artwork of the deceased Christopher Bean, not considered of any merit by members of the Haggett family of New England in whose possession it rests, is deemed valuable by the art world, and the Haggetts begin to fight over rightful ownership.

All performances on Wednesdays-Saturdays begin at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday matinées begin at 2:30 p.m. Subscriptions are now available for all five shows with selection of seating available. Like the 2007-08 season, a pass is $60 per adult, $55 for seniors 55-plus/students with I.D., $75 for a patron, and $1500 for a golden contributor. The patron receives one pass for all scheduled performances and includes a donation to the theatre with recognition in each program. The golden subscriber receives two passes good for 10 consecutive subscriptions and replaces the life membership offered in the past--although current life members will retain their current status.

Do you have any JLT memorabilia? They are missing show photographs from 1980 to 1995. If anyone has some of these, we would love to see them and add them to our collection, said Cecie Fritz, JLT historian.

The Joplin Little Theatre is located at 3008 W. First St. For subscriber information please phone (417) 623-3638. Tickets, when available, also may be purchased prior to each performance.

Season tickets for the 2008-09 season of the Community Theatre for Southwest Missouri, aka Stone's Throw Dinner Theatre, including five shows, are now on sale until July 1, 2008, for $80 per person, a savings of up to $4 per show. After July 1 the ticket price will be $85. Tickets also may be purchased 24-hours prior to each performance.

The show schedule for season ticket holders includes the presentation of Jake's Women to be performed September 4-6 and 12-14, 2008. A play by Neil Simon that was later made into a movie starring Alan Alda, Jake's Women are either those the psychotic writer talks to in real life or in his imagination as he works to save his marriage and deal with his inability to write productively.

On stage from October 16-18 and 24-26, 2008 is Tennessee Williams first successful play, The Glass Menagerie. Considered a biographical account of Williams own life, the play is introduced to the audience by the character named Tom, as a memory play based upon his recollection. Characters in it are Amanda Wingfield, an old overbearing single mother who tries to live vicariously through her children; Amanda's two children, Laura and Tom, each with issues of angst and Jim O'Connor, a high school friend of the children and a potential suitor for Laura.

Everybody Loves Opal by John Patrick is a wacky comedy about an infectiously cheerful but reclusive character named Opal Kronkie who lives in a run-down mansion located at the edge of the municipal dump and the trio of down and out con artists on the lam from the authorities who think that she needs plenty of insurance paid to beneficiaries of their choosing and a rapid demise in order to bolster their shattered finances. It will be staged from February 5-7 and 11-14, 2009.

Considered hilarious and heartfelt, That Darn Plot by David Belkie is a comedy about playwriting, rehearsals, rewriting and rehabilitating reality as well as a sensitive look at a creative Canadian writer named Mark W. Transom who, half drunk and half asleep, is faced with fulfilling a contract by creating a play in one night or losing everything. Unfortunately, he has trouble connecting with people around him, including his only child. Production dates are March 26-28 and April 3-5, 2009.

A Midsummer's Night Dream, the final performance of the season from May 14-16 and 22-24, 2009, is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare written sometime in the 1590s that was made into a movie in 1999 starring Kevin Kline and Michelle Pfeiffer. It portrays the adventures of four young lovers and a group of amateur actors, their interactions with aristocracy and fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest.

Also included in the schedule but not on the season ticket are The Pied Piper, a play that celebrates Robert Browning's classic 1848 poem, to be presented July 10-13 and 18-20, 2008 and Uh-oh, Here Comes Christmas to be performed on December 4-7 and 11-14, 2008. Considered an alternative to the usual Christmas fare, Uh-oh, Here Comes Christmas is comprised of more than a dozen holiday stories by best-selling author Robert Fulghum of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten fame.

A special performance featuring Paxton Williams portraying George Washington Carver will take place on August 9-10, 2008.

To reserve season tickets or for more information phone (417) 358-9665 or (417) 358-7268 or send an e-mail here. Payment may be made by credit card.

Serving dinner and the arts since 1928, Stone's Throw Theatre is located at 796 S. Stone La., Carthage.

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