Carolyn Carpenter

Carolyn Carpenter went through an artistic rite of passage Thursday night as she watched the premiere of her first full-length play, "Six Random Women and the Voice of a Man." Nobody said "break a leg" while she marked time before the lights went down at Alternative Repertory Theatre in Santa Ana, but some of the greetings she got would, to an outsider, seem just as oddly backhanded. "You put makeup on!" Patricia L. Terry, ART's artistic director, exclaimed while giving Carpenter a hello hug.

Carolyn Carpenter went through an artistic rite of passage Thursday night as she watched the premiere of her first full-length play, "Six Random Women and the Voice of a Man." Nobody said "break a leg" while she marked time before the lights went down at Alternative Repertory Theatre in Santa Ana, but some of the greetings she got would, to an outsider, seem just as oddly backhanded. "You put makeup on!" Patricia L. Terry, ART's artistic director, exclaimed while giving Carpenter a hello hug.

Chuck V. Murphy was a model corrections officer at New York's notorious penitentiary on Riker's Island. Smart, muscular and clean-cut, Murphy worked there for four years but, as a closet alcoholic, he struggled to stop drinking during his time off. Recognizing his problem, Murphy quit the $33,000-a-year job and moved to Orange County, where he sought help for his addiction.

Chuck V. Murphy was a model corrections officer at New York's notorious penitentiary on Riker's Island. Smart, muscular and clean-cut, Murphy worked there for four years but, as a closet alcoholic, he struggled to stop drinking during his time off. Recognizing his problem, Murphy quit the $33,000-a-year job and moved to Orange County, where he sought help for his addiction.

The world premiere of "Six Random Women," by Carolyn Carpenter, and the Orange County premieres of recent works by Athol Fugard, John Patrick Shanley and Edward Albee will highlight Alternative Repertory Theatre's 1999-2000 season. Carpenter is associate producer for the 12-year-old ART troupe, which gave a reading of "Six Random Women" in 1997. It will be staged Nov. 20-Dec. 11. The season opens Sept.

Returning from intermission at Alternative Repertory Theatre in Santa Ana, a woman explained to her escort, "No, she was the first girl onstage, with the guitar." The escort asked, "Then that was her mother in the high school scene?" He was trying desperately to make Carolyn Carpenter's "Six Random Women and the Voice of a Man" into a play, with characters that developed over the evening. It never happens. He was swimming upstream, against the current. Carpenter's work is not a play.

"MET a magic," the inaugural production by the MET Acting Company, is an uneven bill of short dramas and comedies with one real clunker, some glimmers of promise and a few moments of theatrical magic. Topics range from alcoholic fathers to odd conversations with a tipsy God to rental boyfriends to cannibal queens.

Lauren Grossman lives in a Seattle neighborhood where "sometimes on a holiday, people do a little target practice." Making the most of a difficult situation, she collects the empty shells and turns them into jewelry. Grossman, whose work is featured at New Stone Age in Los Angeles, is equally adept with industrial salvage and discarded Christmas-tree decorations. By collecting and turning potential trash into "eco-jewelry," she and other artists are giving the word recycled new meaning.

To borrow from the going lingo, jewelry should make a statement this fall. It shouldn't look cowering or meek. And when 350 booths of baubles make statements simultaneously, the result can be a din. Sensory overload time. The recent Los Angeles Fashion Jewelry & Accessories Show at the L.A. Convention Center displayed everything from paper boas called "tropical furs" to sunglasses equipped with flashing lights.

South Coast Repertory, one of Southern California's leading theater companies, has a national reputation for fostering new plays, and occasionally it takes a chance on a playwright who never has had a work staged before. Having one's debut at a respected regional theater might be the play-writing equivalent of a college football player in the first round of the National Football League draft. It does not guarantee a successful professional career, but it tags the draftee as a hot prospect.

The place is hardly what you would expect. Plain as vanilla on the surface, it is set in a boxy Newport Beach office park. Nothing special. But inside it is a fairy-tale gingerbread house filled with white-chocolate ghosts, spools of colorful ribbon, chrome-colored, candy-coated almonds and gingham-covered furniture. This is the home of Golda & I, a fledgling Newport Beach chocolatier who creates edible gifts, exotic sculptured centerpieces and even unusual calling cards for businesses.