E-Mail This Article to a Friend The youth vote Huntington reaches out to the young'uns, Boston Ballet's Rachel Moore leaves town, and more

Desperately seeking students

Outreach is a big thing at the Huntington Theatre Company, which already hosts a Night Club evening for each of its productions aimed at attracting theatergoers 35 and under, and an Out & About Club that gives gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender spectators an opportunity to meet and mingle. Now, with its upcoming (March 5 through April 4) production of Joe Orton’s subversive farce What the Butler Saw, the Huntington has introduced College Night, which will take place on Friday March 26. For this performance only, students can buy $14 student-priced tickets in advance and attend an exclusive (no oldsters) free reception after the 8 p.m. performance.

Actually, theaters everywhere are sweating bullets over finding younger audiences. Wouldn’t want the Fabulous Invalid to expire with the blue-hair set. This particular run-the-audience-through-the-Fountain-of-Youth effort began with the Huntington’s Student Ambassador Program, which, initiated last fall, partners local college students with Huntington marketing staff, in an effort to get the word out to the undergraduate community about Huntington shows. The Ambassadors, who currently represent 17 institutions of higher learning, meet, brainstorm over pizza, and start e-mail chains to tell fellow students what’s on. In exchange, they receive free tickets to the production and access to pre- and post-show events, including feature talks with actors and guest speakers.

In this case, what’s on is resident director Darko Tresnjak’s staging of the late British writer Joe Orton’s merrily corrosive send-up of authority, psychiatry, and sex, with as its most salacious prop the stone penis of Winston Churchill. At this point in time, Orton’s anarchic farces may be less shocking than his demise; he was bludgeoned to death in 1967, just after completing this script, by his one-time mentor and long-time lover, Kenneth Halliwell. But whereas The Butler isn’t Quentin Tarantino, it has lots to offer, including "madness, complete with straitjackets, drugs, and lunatic logic." Did we mention lots of naughty sex? Several hundred $14 balcony tickets to the March 26 performance are being held for valid ID-carrying students. They’re available, subject to availability, at the Huntington box office, 264 Huntington Avenue in Boston; call (617) 266-0800.

— Carolyn Clay

New York grabs another one

The price of success is often having your staff cherry-picked by competing organizations — and that’s true whether you’re a Super Bowl champ or, well, a ballet company. The Patriots have lost outside-linebackers coach Rob Ryan to the Oakland Raiders and quarterbacks coach John Hufnagel to the New York Giants. Now Boston Ballet has announced that Rachel Moore, director of the company’s Center for Dance Education, has been named executive director of American Ballet Theatre. Boston Ballet executive director Valerie Wilder reports that she and artistic director Mikko Nissinen "are extraordinarily pleased and proud that our colleague has been selected to run one of the premier ballet companies in the country, and we look forward to working with her in this new capacity. Her contributions to Boston Ballet have been wide-reaching and significant. Her departure is truly bittersweet and we wish her the very best of luck in this exciting new career endeavor."

From 1984 to 1988, Moore was a dancer with American Ballet Theatre, when it was directed by Mikhail Baryshnikov. Before joining Boston Ballet, she was the executive director of Project STEP, a classical-music school for students of color in affiliation with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, New England Conservatory, Boston University, and Greater Boston Youth Symphonies; the managing director of Ballet Theatre of Boston; the director of the Center for Community Development and the Arts at Americans for the Arts in Washington; and the development officer for the National Cultural Alliance in Washington. In other words, she’s already had a distinguished post-dance career, and the fact that Boston Ballet’s Dance Education director could get appointed executive director at ABT tells you how far BB has come.

In "related news," Boston Ballet has taken the opportunity to remind us that the BB School will be celebrating its 50th anniversary this Saturday, March 6, with a program, to be danced by students and alumni, comprising the first movement from George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, the peasant pas de trois from Swan Lake staged by Mikko Nissinen, and a new work choreographed by Boston Ballet senior artist Viktor Plotnikov. That’s at the Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street in the South End (around the corner from BB’s Clarendon Street home), at 7:30 p.m., with a reception to follow. Tickets for this attractive-sounding benefit are $75 to $250; call Jennifer Walsh at (617) 456-6257 or e-mail jwalsh@bostonballet.com.

— Jeffrey Gantz

Coolidge kudos to Zhang Yimou

He hasn’t gotten much respect from his homeland, which has banned some of his best pictures. Or from his star and former lover, Gong Li, who in 1995 dumped him for a Singapore businessman. Or even from his American distributor, Miramax Films, which has held up the American release of his epic film Hero for two years and has imposed drastic cuts on the version scheduled to open this year.

The Coolidge Corner Foundation, on the other hand, is honored to recognize Zhang Yimou, the Chinese cinematic giant and maker of such treasures as Red Sorghum (1987), Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991), Not One Less (1999), and The Road Home (1999). He’ll be receiving the first Coolidge Award, which includes a $10,000 cash grant, in a special ceremony at the Coolidge Corner Theatre May 26 and 27. And yes, he’ll be making the trip from China for the event, says the Coolidge. Zhang, who along with fellow "Fifth Generation" filmmakers like Chen Kaige has transformed the Chinese film industry into one of the world’s most influential, will add this to his other awards, which include an Oscar nomination for Raise the Red Lantern. The Coolidge will precede the award weekend with a month-long series of related screenings of his films and panel discussions and workshops on the director. For more information, call (617) 725-2500.

— Peter Keough