‘Same Time, Next Year’ Opens the Grove’s Season This Year

“Same Time, Next Year,” the two-character comedy by Bernard Slade that begat the 1978 movie with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn, opens the Grove Theater Center’s season, with previews starting Feb. 21. The play follows a quarter-century in the life of an adulterous affair between two otherwise happily married people who rendezvous one weekend each year to renew their intimate acquaintance. Regular performances begin Feb. 24 at the Gem Theater in Garden Grove and continue Thursdays through Saturdays until March 11. The theater expects to announce the rest of its 2001 season soon. (714) 741-9555.

BOLD STROKES: The Orange County Playwrights Alliance offers a staged reading of “Weather Permitting” by Fullerton playwright Max Espinoza, at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Vanguard Theatre, 699-A S. State College Blvd., Fullerton. It’s about two young Latino artists who ply their trade as cartoonists by drawing caricatures of passersby on a Southern California pier, and what they do when an opportunity arises to work as film animators in Hollywood. (714) 850-1176.

STAGE AND SCREEN: Stages in Fullerton is offering a theater and screen doubleheader, with “Film Expose,” an hour of four short films by local directors, after 8 p.m. performances of Bernard Pomerance’s play “The Elephant Man.” The mini film fest starts at 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through March 2 at Stages, 400 E. Commonwealth Ave., No. 4. (714) 525-4484.