Off-Stage News

-- "Funhouse": Beginning Jan. 29, A Contemporary Theatre, in conjunction with TheatreVision and ShadowCatcher Entertainment, will present "Funhouse," a combination of live performance with an "episodic story of avant-garde intrigue."

"Funhouse" stars vaudevillians Dmitri Karamazov of the Flying Karamazov Brothers, Rebecca Chace, Cathy Sutherland and the UMO Ensemble, and features Baby Gramps and Christian Swenson, among others. Free food will be served.

The show runs Thursdays-Saturdays through Feb. 7 (with a Sunday matinee on Feb. 8) in ACT's Bullitt Cabaret.

For more information, call 206-292-7676.

-- Intiman Theatre has received a $100,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its New Voices program.

The program, begun by Intiman artistic director Warner Shook in 1993, nurtures new works by playwrights. It has offered staged readings of works by writers such as William Mastrosimone, Constance Congdon and Robert Schenkkan.

Three New Voices plays have gone on to world-premiere productions at Intiman: Leslie Ayvazian's "Nine Armenians," Jeffrey Hatcher's "Smash" and Ellen McLaughlin's "Tongue of a Bird." "Red" by Chay Yew, which closed the 1997 New Voices series, will have its world-premiere production as part of Intiman's 1998 mainstage season.

-- PEN Center USA West will hand out $10,000 in cash prizes for its 1998 annual literary awards competition, which honors outstanding works published or produced in 1997 by writers living in the Western U.S.

The deadline for entering this year's competition in the drama, screenplay and teleplay categories is Jan. 31.

For guidelines and an entry form, write to: PEN Center USA West, 1998 Literary Awards Contest, 672 S. Lafayette Park Place, No. 41, Los Angeles, CA 90057. For more information, call 213-365-8500.