Inside Arts

• The Legislature in is town. So are the media opportunities and awareness events. The Texas Coalition for Quality Arts Education, which represents more than 45 arts and education organizations statewide, is hosting an Arts Education Day Monday at the state Capitol. Student performers -- including jazz bands, orchestras, mariachis, dance ensembles, theater troupes and elementary school choirs -- start the show at noon in the Capitol Rotunda to rally legislators' awareness of arts education, perpetually threatened with the budget ax. -- Jeanne Claire van Ryzin

• Carson Kreitzer, an Austin playwright and graduate student at the University of Texas' Michener Center for Writers, can add another kudo to the list of commendations she's already received for 'The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer.' The play, which examines the life of the American Jewish physicist who was the prinicpal architect of the Manhattan Project, the top-secret program responsible for the development of the atomic bomb, has already won the Rosenthal New Play Prize, the Barry Stavis Award and an American Theatre Critics/Steinberg New Play citation. Now, Kreitzer gets what every playwright really wants -- a great production and a review. Chicago Sun-Times theater critic Hedy Weiss lauds the current production at Evanston's Next Theatre: 'So much brilliance, ambivalence, ego, history, myth, science, moral argument, emotional heat, poetry and sheer dazzling theatricality are compressed into a mere two hours.' Smokin'. -- J.C.v.R.

• The Great White Way has decided what it's sending to Austin next season. But Broadway is having to kowtow to our local venue developments. While Broadway Across America sent us five touring productions this season, for 2005-06 we'll only get three. That's because, according to Dallas-based publicist B.J. Larkin, UT's Bass Concert Hall is closing in mid-2007 for renovations. With the Long Center for the Performing Arts not set to open until late 2007, the calendar at Bass is getting tight. The ever-steamy 'Chicago' opens in September, followed by 'Movin' Out,' the Billy Joel/Twyla Tharp collaboration in November. Then former Olympic gymnast Cathy Rigby brings her farewell tour of 'Peter Pan' to town in February 2006. Call 1-800-731-SHOW or visit www.BroadwayAcrossAmerica.com for tickets and more information. -- J.C.v.R.