Actor/writer/producer Laurence Fishburne (pictured above) has come back to the legitimate stage with a vengeance. In June he starred in Alfred Uhry’s new play Without Walls at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. He is currently starring opposite Angela Bassett in August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fences at the Pasadena Playhouse. Fishburne made his Broadway debut in 1992 in another Wilson play, Two Trains Running, winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor. Coincidentally, Bassett also made her Broadway debut in a Wilson play, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, back in 1988.

Buffalo’s A.R. Gurney will be well represented in New York in the 2006-07 season with three world premieres. Primary Stages just completed the run of his beautiful new play Indian Blood, set in Buffalo in the 1940s. In October, Flea Theater will open its season with the political play Post Mortem, set in the not-too-distant future. Next May, Playwright Horizons will present Crazy Mary, another family play set in Buffalo. Locally, the Kavinoky Theater will present Gurney’s The Fourth Wall in its January slot.

It might as well be FriedFest in Buffalo this September. Manny Fried’s play The Dodo Bird will be the inaugural production at the newly renovated Road Less Traveled Theater housed within the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center. Directed by Scott Behrend, the play opens this week and runs through October 8. Fried will also be co-starring with Roz Cramer in the Gerald Fried Company’s production of Rebecca Ritchie’s new play The Memory Garden, September 21-October 1 at the Main Street Cabaret. And, on September 13 at 7:30pm, Fried will be appearing with Gary Earl Ross at Hallwalls as part of the Gray Hair Reading Series. They will both be reading from their own prose.

Diane Gaidry returns to Buffalo this fall to star as Mary Tyrone in the ICTC production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which will be directed by Fortunato Pezzimenti and will also star Paul Falzone, Christian Brandjes, Michael Providence and Sara Kovecsi. Gaidry, who is the co-founder of Filmmakers Alliance in Los Angeles, attended the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts and Buffalo State College. She stars in the independent feature film The Dogwalker, which will open at the Market Arcade next Friday, September 15.

UB Department of Theater & Dance graduate Ethan Matthews will be touring the country with Joan Collins and Linda Evans in James Kirkwood’s hilarious comedy Legends! The production opens at the Royal Alexandra in Toronto on September 12. Matthews was a member of Professor Maria Horne’s International Artistic and Cultural Exchange Creative Research Lab.

Michele Ragusa and Richard Ruiz are among the nominees for the 2006 Barrymore Awards, the awards for excellence in theater in the Greater Philadelphia area. Ragusa, who was last seen in Buffalo in Bad Dates at Studio Arena, is nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Musical for her performance in Adrift in Macao. The show is scheduled to open in New York in January with Ragusa recreating her part. In the mean time, she is heading to Urinetown! in Cleveland. A graduate of Buffalo State, Ruiz is nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Musical for his performance in Forum. Ruiz will be back in Buffalo in February in the touring production of Sweet Charity which will play at Shea’s.

Alleyway Theatre’s opening of Eric Bentley’s Unholy Trinity on September 14 coincides with the playwright’s 90th birthday. On October 6 the production will perform off-Broadway at Symphony Space as part of a tribute to Bentley’s birthday and his lifetime contribution to the arts.

Steve Henderson and Roslyn Ruff (pictured below) give superb performances in the current New York revival of August Wilson’s Seven Guitars at the Signature Theatre. The show was directed by yet another Buffalonian, Ruben Santiago-Hudson who won a Tony for his performance in the original Broadway production of the play in 1996.