Theater, Music to Take Center Stage at Santa Monica Arts Festival

Watch out, Chris: the Santa Monica Arts Festival 1992, billed as a counter-celebration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ expedition, unfurls on the Santa Monica Pier next Sunday, from noon to 7 p.m.

The one-day festival of theater, music, art, food and children’s programming includes appearances by Navajo storyteller Geraldine Keams, the musical trio Hecho en Mexico, the theater piece “Ghostdance,” the Cahuilla Bird Singers, performers Roger Guenveur Smith and Monica Palacios, the Dolphin Dancers, the Actors Gang in “Mayhem: The Invasion,” and traditional Latin music from Quetzalcoatl. Admission is free. (310) 458-8350.

Also opening this month:

Thursday: Set in a modern-day parochial school, the Cornerstone Theatre’s production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” takes up residence at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica.

Thursday: “Nevertheless,” a solo show of songs, scenes and satire by actor-singer-pianist Murphy Dunne opens at the Globe Playhouse in West Hollywood.

Thursday: An unscrupulous senatorial candidate and his wife face their lovers and political supporters on election eve in Mark M. Troy’s “The Secret Nymph of New Hyde Park,” premiering at the Attic Theatre in Hollywood.

Friday: Matthew Carnahan’s “The Dog Inside the Man,” five monologues--on rage, betrayal, loneliness, terror and abandonment--has a late-night run at Hollywood’s American New Theatre.

Friday: Rupert, 17, is on the verge of a pre-college breakdown in “The Senior,” by and starring Eugene Pack, at Theatre/Theater in Hollywood.

Friday: In Hollywood, The Actors Co-op opens its season with “1918 Life” by Horton Foote (“To Kill a Mockingbird”), a period drama set in a small Texas town.

Friday: Chris Hart directs his father Moss Hart’s backstage comedy, “Light Up the Sky,” at West Coast Ensemble in Hollywood.

Saturday: Satirist Mort Sahl plays one night at Pepperdine University’s Smothers Theatre.

Saturday: Actor-singers Tim Curry, Kathy Garrick, Dinah Lenney, Paige O’Hara and Holland Taylor join forces at West Hollywood’s Rose Garden Performance Center for a one-night benefit to help send the local hit, “Love of a Pig,” to the Dublin International Theatre Festival in October.

Sept. 13: Jeremy Sweet’s bittersweet “Porch,” about a woman who comes home to renew her relationship with her father, opens at the Santa Monica Playhouse.

Sept. 14: In 1930s Russia, a simple man finds his suicide thwarted by bureaucrats and opportunists in Nikolai Erdmann’s dark comedy, “The Suicide,” at the Road Theatre in Sun Valley.

Sept. 14: Political, sexual, emotional, cultural and physical torture are the subject of “Torture,” a play reading by the AsianAmerican Theater Project at Highways.

Sept. 15: Andrew Lloyd Webber plus T. S. Eliot equals everyone’s favorite feline musical, “Cats,” in a touring production at the Shubert Theatre in Century City.

Sept. 15: Sir Ian McKellen makes his only Southern California appearance at UCLA’s Royce Hall in the Royal National Theatre’s production of “Richard III.”

Sept. 16: Frank Galati’s acclaimed adaptation of John Steinbeck’s tale of the Joad family, “The Grapes of Wrath,” opens at the Los Angeles Theatre Academy, on the campus of L.A. City College.

Sept. 17: Ira Levin’s “Cantorial,” the story of a Manhattan couple who find their brownstone was formerly a synagogue and is now haunted by the ghost of its cantor, plays a return engagement at Actors Alley in North Hollywood.

Sept. 18: “Poor Murderer,” Pavel Khout’s play within a play--set in a St. Petersburg mental institution circa 1900--has a rare revival at Hollywood’s Open Fist Theatre.

Sept. 18: The late Mrs. Peterman’s four children and grandson gather to go through her belongings in Samuel Bernstein’s “The Liquidation of Granny Peterman,” at the Burbank Little Theatre.

Sept. 19: “The Spellbinders,” with illusionists Peter Samelson and Dameon, arrives for a single performance at Smothers Theatre.

Sept. 22: In the spirit of “Tony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding” comes “Barry Moses’ Bar Mitzvah,” an interactive theatrical comedy--complete with religious ceremony, squabbling relatives and dinner buffet--at the Hyatt Hotel in Hollywood.

Sept. 25: Commissioned from British historian Oliver Taplin, “The Wanderings of Odysseus,” a co-production of the Mark Taper Forum and the J. Paul Getty Museum, opens at the Getty in Malibu.

Sept. 25: “Under the Gaslight,” Augustin Daly’s period drama on star-crossed lovers, set in New York, inaugurates Pacific Theatre Ensemble’s new space in Culver City.

Sept. 30: Stephen Sondheim’s musical take on some fairy-tale favorites; “Into the Woods” opens at Hollywood’s East West Players.