A diverse selection of plays and musicals, both new and revisited, await audiences as the spring theater schedule moves into full gear.

Performing intermittently from Feb. 18 through March 6 is the Broadway classic &A Chorus Line.& The play, about 17 dancers vying for a role in a Broadway production, was a blockbuster success, with 6,137 performances during its production run from 1975 to 1990.

This is the first time the play has been performed at Sac State, and the timing worked out well, said Mary Robinson, publicity director for the Department of Theater and Dance.

&It is scheduled to be revived on Broadway in fall of 2006, which means this might be the last regional production for some time,& Robinson said. &When it was performed on Broadway originally & regional theaters like ours & can&t get the rights to do it, so we luckily got it at the right time.&

&A Chorus Line& also has the most performance dates of any other theater production this semester, with 13 shows. Robinson said this is because musicals perform better on the weekends, and the theater department has started to add weekend dates to all of its performances for more convenient scheduling.

Other productions scheduled for this semester include performances that celebrate cultural diversity and highlight both local and international talent. &Cloud Tectonics,& by playwright Jose Rivera, is about a man who picks up a pregnant hitchhiker, a mystical woman for whom the laws of time do not apply.

As the couple falls in love, time slows to a crawl and one night together somehow becomes two years.

&Vinegar Tom,& by British playwright Caryl Churchill, is set in 17th century England where two farm women reject the sexual advances of the men, leading to accusations that the women are witches.

Professor Juanita Rice, director of the Sac State performance of &Vinegar Tom,& said the decision to bring the play here was based on the message of the play and its relevance to events in the world today.

&(Churchill) said she was interested in the topic of witches being scapegoats in times of stress, like Jews and blacks in contemporary Europe and the United States,& Rice said. &The topic is well-researched and may be particularly relevant at a time when Iraqi citizens are dying and suffering in a ‘war on terror,’ who are characterized as ‘the enemy’ regardless of their individual innocence, and their suffering swept under the rug.&

For more information about the upcoming spring performances, visit the Department of Theatre and Dance Web site at www.csus.edu/dram.