As its inaugural production, The Bayou Playhouse presents Rising Water, the play nominated for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in drama and winner of the 2006 National New Play Network Commission Award. In the plot, a couple awakens in the middle of the night to find their pitch-dark house filling with water.  Clambering into their attic, and then onto their rooftop, they struggle not only to survive but also to keep the guttering flame of their love from being extinguished. Not coincidentally, opening night for the play, and for the theatre itself, falls on Friday, August 29 - the three-year anniversary of Katrina's arrival. 7:30 pm Friday and Saturday; 2:30 pm Sunday. Sundays include post-play audience conversation. $20.50–$23. (888) 99-BAYOU (22968) or www.bayouplayhouse.com.

The West Baton Rouge Museum will host an exhibit featuring photographs showing people and places that are significant in the history of the Brusly community. Photographs will include structures, individuals, and events of the present and the past. Museum hours are 10 am–4:30 pm Tuesday—Friday and 2 pm–5 pm Sunday at 845 North Jefferson Avenue. Free and open to the public. (225) 336-2422 ext 16.

To celebrate local adult literacy service providers and their students, The Greater Baton Rouge Literacy Coalition will host its first Literacy Week Celebration. Literacy Week will include three events open to the public, beginning with a restaurant fund raiser Tuesday, during which an estimated twenty restaurants will donate a percentage of their day’s sales to the GBRLC. For a list of the restaurants, visit www.blacktie-louisiana.com. On Wednesday, adult literacy students will read their original poetry and stories at Barnes and Noble, 2590 Citiplace Court. And on Thursday, local dyslexia expert Georgeann Mire will offer a simulation mirroring the classroom environment for a child with a learning disability, also at Barnes and Noble. Literacy Week will culminate in a breakfast Friday for more than one hundred community leaders. At this gathering, guests will preview a new video featuring Secretary of Labor Tim Barfield, East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid Gautreaux, and Mayor Kip Holden discussing the community-wide impact of illiteracy. Also from Saturday, August 30 through Sunday, September 7, both local Barnes and Noble Booksellers will donate a percentage of their net sales to the GBRLC. To participate, simply tell your sales person you are supporting the GBRLC with your purchase. (225) 381-7141 or www.gbrliteracy.org.

The Natchez Coffee Company will display an exhibit of oil paintings by Ann Reeves Faillace. The exhibit includes seven paintings of varied dimensions and will show through the end of the September. 7 am–6 pm Monday—Friday, and 8 am–5 pm Saturday—Sunday, at 509 Franklin Street. (601) 304-1415 or www.natchezcoffee.com.

The West Baton Rouge Museum has on exhibit a display and information on Holy Family Church in Port Allen and the church’s eighty-year history. The ecclesiastical establishment of The Holy Family Parish and its first church, the Holy Family Church, took place eighty years ago in 2008 on Thanksgiving Day. Find out more about the history of this and other area churches during museum hours 10 am–4:30 pm Tuesday—Friday and 2 pm–5 pm Sunday at 845 North Jefferson Avenue. Free and open to the public. (225) 336-2422 ext 16.

Visitors to Rosedown State Historic Site are welcome to try their hand at plucking cotton from cotton plants and removing seeds from the bolls. Once the cotton is picked and deseeded visitors are asked to drop it in an authentic cotton bag … which ought to give a sense of the amount of labor required to fill one. 10 am–4 pm at 12501 Highway 10. $10 admission includes a house tour. (888) 376-1867.

This latest Louisiana Watercolor Society member show promises to submerge watercolor aficionados in a diverse display of styles and themes from the society's most talented painters.  Awards will be selected by Sharon Weilbaecher, an Arkansas native who has lived in New Orleans since 1967. She is featured in art books and the Spring 2008 edition of Watercolor magazine. There's an opening reception Wednesday September 11, from 5 pm–7 pm. Crescent City Brewhouse, 527 Decatur. www.lwsart.org.

The Southern Repertory Theatre presents the regional premiere of the comedy with music Speech & Debate by Stephen Karam. Speech & Debate ran Off-Broadway last season, where it was extended twice at The Roundabout. In it, three high school misfits find each other over the internet and decide to combat local corruption, sex scandals and bad casting when they sign up for the newly formed speech and debate team to take their grievances public. Their hard-won exposé culminates in a time-traveling George Michael-inspired musical version of Miller’s The Crucible. Local actors James Bartelle, Natalie Boyd, Sean Glazebrook and Liann Pattison make up the cast. Aimée Hayes directs. Southern Rep will host talk-backs for the audience after the Sunday matinées. Previews begin September 3; opening night is September 6, which includes a wine and cheese reception. 8 pm Thursday—Saturday and 3 pm Sunday. Canal Place, 3rd Floor. $18—$35. (504) 522-6545 or www.southernrep.com.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav, we sincerely hope all of our readers, contributors, and advertisers who play a part in Country Roads are safe and well. The hurricane has left both Country Roads' Baton Rouge and St. Francisville offices without power or telephones, and scattered our staff to several states. We expect to be back at work manning the phones, and telling storm stories, by Monday, September 8. In the meantime, if you need to contact us, we can be reached by texting to (225) 721-1460.
James Fox-Smith, editor

The action in the town known as “Frog City” is certain to be ribbeting when more than fifty thousand folks flock to all the usual favorite attractions, special new events and an entertainment lineup to make other festivals green with envy. The annual festival celebrates Rayne's proud status as the single largest worldwide shipper of frog legs through most of the twentieth century. Doing that means frog racing and jumping competitions (Sunday from 11 am–1 pm), as well as the chance to get a kiss from the Frog Derby Queen, who will pucker up in the hope of liberating that long-lost prince. The honor of being this festival’s namesake stops somewhere short of the thirty food booths though, as fried frog’s legs are available in abundance. Other activities include Cajun and Zydeco bands on two platforms, numerous tasty non-frog-based treats, rides, a parade (1 pm Saturday), an accordion contest, petting zoo, enormous arts and crafts area, golf competition and more. 6 pm–midnight Friday ($5), 9 am–12:30 am Saturday ($5 through 3 pm; $7 thereafter), 9:30 am–4 pm Sunday ($5). (337) 334-8347 or www.raynefrogfestival.org.

Thirty-three years on, you’re safe to call this antiques show an antique in its own right. Since 1974 the energetic ladies of the Ta Wa Si Civic Club have ensured that their Bayou Lafourche Antiques Show & Sale gets the jump on other antiques events by being the first major show of the fall season. This means that all that merchandise gathered by dealers over the slower summer months makes its way to the Evergreen Cajun Center first. With forty dealers from twelve states attending this year, it all adds up to lots of interesting stuff.
The show specializes in fine American, French and English furniture, silver, silver-plate, porcelain, vintage linens and children’s clothing, glassware and folk art, quilts, yellow ware, architectural and garden items. Selections go so far as Imari, oil paintings, lithographs, majolica, flow blue, decoys and estate jewelry, too. You don’t have to be an antiques expert to enjoy it; dealers are always happy to answer questions and share their knowledge.
10 am–6 pm Friday and Saturday, 11 am–5 pm Sunday at the Thibodaux Civic Center, 310 North Canal Boulevard. $5 gets you in for all three days. (985) 446-0207or www.geocities.com/thibodauxantiqueshow.

The Alfred C. Glassell, Jr. Exhibition Gallery in the Shaw Center will exhibit the Glassell Film Festival–Works by Louisiana Filmmakers. The participating filmmakers include former and current Louisiana residents who have created independent films on subjects ranging from the adventures of an animated lizard to a documentary of ironing as culture in Southwest Louisiana. Kind local furniture companies will provide chairs and sofas (several of which will be donated to local charitable organizations at the close of the exhibition), so the viewers can watch in comfort, while munching on popcorn. At the public opening reception, at 6 pm on Friday, September 5, the gallery will screen all of the fourteen featured films. Folks can return at a different (quieter) time to sit back and more fully take in the films. After the opening reception, the films will be shown in the following order:
• 10:30am - 4:30pm Tuesday and Thursday:
- Travis H. Williams, Jason Wood: The Lost Island of Laveau
- Allison Bohl, Conni Castille: Raised on Rice and Gravy
- Talice Lee: Pauses in Drifting and White Caves
- Chicory Miles: Churning of the Milk
- Terrance Osborne, Chad Chenier: cotton canDAY
- Greta Songe, Carlos Ferguson, Lee Ferguson: The Beginning
• 10:30am - 4:45pm Wednesday and Friday
- Allison Bohl, Conni Castille: I Always Do My Collars First
- Vince LiCata, Tony LiCata: Addictive
- Janet LURUdawsky: Garden Rituals                                                              
- John Michael Byrd: Self
- Jeff Roedel: Life in the Tall Tall Grass
• Saturdays: 12:30 - 4:30pm films are 60-70 minutes and will restart roughly every 2 hours
- Lynn Lamousin: The Lady from Sockholm
- LSU Class: Revisiting Flaherty’s Louisiana Story
100 Lafayette Street. (225) 389-7180.

The Iberia Performing Arts League presents That's the Spirit. The comedy murder mystery revolves around a vaudeville performer who returns from the dead to help his wife and daughter, who are being dominated by a greedy banker. 7:30 pm Friday and Saturday; 3 pm Sunday at Essanee Theater, 126 Iberia Street. $10. (337) 364-6114.

The Brunner Gallery will exhibit sculpture by California artist Joseph Watts. As part of the coordinated gallery openings in downtown Covington on September 13, an opening reception will give viewers a chance to meet the artist from 6 pm–8 pm at 215 North Columbia Street. (985) 893-0444 or www.brunnergallery.com.

Creative Clinton residents are brandishing their brushes in one of the longest-serving businesses in this historic town—McKnight's. The venerable store has made room for an oil painting class taught by Baton Rouge's Libby Johnson, and an art show of resulting works. Supported by the Baton Rouge Arts Council and the Clinton Main Street Association, the exhibit will be available through September. Artists displaying include Elizabeth Denton and Martha Singer of St. Francisville; Linda Broderick from Jackson; and Donna Kilbourne, Frances Durham, Alice Kent, Susan Trahan, Catherine Landry and Carol Shirley from Clinton. 9:30 am–5:30 pm Monday—Saturday on St. Helena Street. (225) 683-8267

The house is gone now. These days, all that's left of Locust Grove Plantation is its small but well-preserved family cemetery which is open for tours and demonstrations of the art of gravestone rendering—a non-damaging method of copying tombstone inscriptions. Given that Locust Grove is the final resting place of Sarah Knox Taylor Davis—daughter of Confederate general Zachary Taylor and first wife of Jefferson Davis, this makes for an interesting pastime. Free supplies and instruction. 2 pm–4:30 pm. Locust Grove is near St. Francisville on the Bains Road off Louisiana Highway 10. (888) 677-2838.

Those that visit Fontainebleau State Park for this history tour will meet at the site's sugar mill ruins to learn about the history of Marigny's Fontainebleau Plantation. The tour then makes its way along the main road to discuss the brick kiln and purgery ruins and heads to the lakefront for information on the slave bell. 1 pm at 67825 Highway 190. (888) 677-3668.

The Rural Life Museum Junior Docents are looking for interested students in the sixth through twelfth grades to volunteer for the year. Through monthly meetings, events, and field trips they are offered diverse opportunities to learn about nineteenth century life and to share this knowledge with others.  Junior docents volunteer at the museum throughout the year, and they assist staff and artisans during the museum’s interpretive events: Harvest Days, A Rural Life Christmas, and the Rural Life Apprentice Program. Orientation and training is Sunday, September 7, 1:30 pm–3:30 pm at museum, 4600 Essen Lane. (225) 765-2437.

Baton Rouge Little Theater will hold auditions for three upcoming plays this month:
• September 7 and 8, 7 pm: BRLT will hold auditions for Blood Knot, the drama written by South African playwright Atholl Fugard, set in his motherland. The available roles are Zachariah, an African-American male, in his thirties and forties; and Morris, caucasian male, thirties or forties. Kyle LeMaire will direct. Performances will run from October 17—26.
• September 20, noon; and September 21, 5 pm: Auditions for Dracula, the classic Gothic love story, with Keith Dixon in the director's chair. Several roles are available. Performances October 31—November 16.
• September 28, 5 pm; and September 29, 7 pm: BRLT will hold auditions for Robert Bolt's Tony Award winning play A Man for All Seasons. Several roles are available. Performances will be January 23—February 8.
7155 Florida Boulevard. (225) 924-6496 or www.brlt.org.