Penny Fuller

Balance. It's a word that comes up often for Penny Fuller. "Rose's world is out of balance," said the auburn-haired actress. She was describing the character she plays in Jon Robin Baitz's "Dutch Landscape," the turbulent story of an American family in contemporary South Africa (opening tonight at the Mark Taper Forum). "There's excess . Excessive aloneness, excessive waiting. And what happens to a person who waits? What happens to a society that waits?

Balance. It's a word that comes up often for Penny Fuller. "Rose's world is out of balance," said the auburn-haired actress. She was describing the character she plays in Jon Robin Baitz's "Dutch Landscape," the turbulent story of an American family in contemporary South Africa (opening tonight at the Mark Taper Forum). "There's excess . Excessive aloneness, excessive waiting. And what happens to a person who waits? What happens to a society that waits?

Here is the complete list of nominees for the 46th annual nighttime Emmy Awards, as announced Thursday by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. The academy said additional nominations will be released in the next few weeks, for categories such as choreography, voice-over performance and individual achievement in informational and cultural programming. * Comedy series: "Frasier," NBC; "Home Improvement," ABC; "The Larry Sanders Show," HBO; "Mad About You," NBC; "Seinfeld," NBC.

Award Winners Galore: Academy Award winners Maureen Stapleton and Maximilian Schell top an all-star cast set for "Miss Rose White," a "Hallmark Hall of Fame" presentation that begins filming next week in Richmond, Va. They are joined by Tony winner Amanda Plummer, Emmy winner Penny Fuller and Kyra Sedgwick. The director is Joseph Sargent, himself a multiple Emmy winner.

The ninth annual Southland Theater Artists Goodwill Event (S.T.A.G.E.) will present "George & Ira Gershwin: A Musical Tribute" as a fund-raiser for AIDS Project Los Angeles at the Embassy Theater, 851 S. Grand, on Feb. 5 and 6 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 7 at 2 p.m.

Veronica Hamel is downright scary as a kidnaper in Sunday's CBS movie "Baby Snatcher" (9 p.m. on Channels 2 and 8). Hamel plays Bianca, a woman so obsessed with keeping her insensitive and remarkably gullible husband (Michael Madsen) that she fakes a pregnancy. When the nine months are up, she needs an infant fast. Posing as a candidate for a nanny position, Bianca steals the month-old daughter of unmarried waitress Karen (Nancy McKeon).

Des McAnuff's staging of "The Sea Gull" at the La Jolla Playhouse proceeds from the assumption that it's necessary to divorce Chekhov from everything "Chekhovian" before we can see him clearly. You will recall that the play begins on the edge of a lake at dusk, with a little home-made stage in the foreground. Treplev, the boyish writer, is about to try (in vain) to impress his actress mother, Arkadina, with a new play, which will be lit by the rising moon.

The story begins with the sounds of lovemaking -- of life renewing itself -- while death silently pays a visit to an adjacent room. What follows in the Geffen Playhouse's West Coast premiere of "Franny's Way" is a meditation on life's precariousness. It's a gentle tale, perhaps too gentle, for it's easy to reach the end thinking: What was that, and why did I bother to watch it? Long silences and little gestures are as important to the telling of this story as any of the words set to paper.

All you have to do is make your way to the Matrix Theatre on Melrose Avenue to know that producer Joe Stern is back in town. With bells on. Who else would dream of putting on George M. Cohan's hilarious farce, "The Tavern," with two entirely different casts? Who else would guarantee that no two performances are alike by seeing that the mix of cast members changes from show to show? And who else would commandeer a group of players zany enough to submit to such a cockamamie experiment?

Chekhov poured a lot of anguish about the act of writing into "The Seagull," and in the production of the play now at the Matrix Theatre, some actors best known for their TV work pour a lot of anguish about acting into it too.