One of the best pieces of news of the Playhouse in the Park 2003-04 season announced last week is that for the first time in 16 years, a Cincinnati playwright is on the schedule.

In fact, Joseph McDonough's One has premier placement, opening the Shelterhouse season in September.

Local playwrights are still celebrating and ready to resume serious talk about how to build the region's "playwright power."

Kevin Barry is a recipient of an Ohio Arts Council artist fellowship. His In Rebel Country premiered (as does much of his work) at Know Theatre Tribe. He also has a loose partnership with a small Los Angeles area theater and has been enjoying plenty of rustles of interest beyond the city for Rebel.

"It would be great to have an open networking session twice a year (or so) where the artistic directors of local theaters meet and hear ideas from local writers," he suggests.

"The Dramatists Guild sponsors just such a meeting in New York every few months, and, as the song says, if you can make it there...."

Norma Jenckes, professor in the English department at University of Cincinnati, counts playwrighting among the courses she teaches.

"I'd like to see local theater companies adopt a playwright," she says, "and I'd expand local to mean the Tristate area.

"We should think about developing the sense that Cincinnati should function as a regional theater center and in seeing it as a hub for playwrights. This isn't being done anywhere else in the area."

Ensemble Theatre producing artistic director D. Lynn Meyers speaks of ETC's contribution.

McDonough, she points out, has been annually commissioned (with songwriter David Kisor) to write the theater's holiday musical.

"Three years ago, I invited submissions for a Cincinnati Playwrights Festival as part of the Off-Center series," she reminds.

"I was thinking somebody else might continue it, but it hasn't happened. We're looking at a summer that's going to be fairly dark. It might be a good time for someone to re-visit it."

Another of Jenckes' ideas is seconded by McDonough: They'd both love to see a playwrights center modeled after the one in Minneapolis that seems to churn out talent.

"It's a long-term goal," McDonough acknowledges, "but to aim for an organization that focuses on playwrights who have various needs, interests, backgrounds, experience levels, an organization that would merge teaching, lectures with visiting playwrights, discussions, readings, workshops and perhaps even small productions so that playwrights in the area can have a sense of community and dedication to craft."

Help for playwrights: Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative, which Norma Jenckes founded seven years ago, never has evolved since her departure in the late `90s. Volunteer executive director Chuck Wente is hoping to see that change but acknowledges that until recently CPI has been primarily "a place for new playwrights to get help."

CPI now holds six public readings a year. The next is Jay's Symphony by Allyson Jacob at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Aronoff's Fifth Third Bank Theater.

Next on the CPI agenda, says Wente, are workshops. "It's something the whole group has wanted very badly." It's a process of at least a week of attention to a script culminating in a public reading.

Wente says next season there will be "at least one and maybe two in the new black box theater at the new Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art."

For information about CPI call Wente at (859) 291-6996.

Free Saturday workshops: Ensemble has been holding free Saturday workshops this season with authors from the Theatre of the Mind play reading series.

Next up will be David Richmond and Drew Fracher at 2 p.m. Saturday, prior to the March 24 public reading of Swordsong. (Call 421-3555 for information.)

"Six Saturdays a year," artistic director D. Lynn Meyers says, "we've made an opportunity for local writers to hear writers further along in their careers talk about their process.

"Theatre of the Mind will continue next year. Maybe following the session on those six Saturdays, or on Saturdays in-between there could be an opportunity for writers to get together and bounce ideas off each other.

"Wouldn't it be terrific if one night a week there were a playwrights collective where rain, sleet or snow, writers would come together and write. That's what it's about. Writers write."

One-act plays: In regional playwriting news, the Mad Anthony Theatre Company will celebrate the 10th anniversary of its home base, the Fitton Center for the Creative Arts in Hamilton, with the world premiere of locally written one-act plays on April 4-6.

Ties That Bind by Ruth Britt of Hamilton is about a couple pushed by a crisis to the edge of their comfort zone; God Don't Like Ugly by Terence V. Moore of Middletown poses the question "what color is your heart?"

Hotel Terminus by Bill Hilsmier of Hamilton celebrates the days of radio drama. Guests of the Nation by Brian Smith of Hamilton deals with Dublin's Easter Rebellion of 1916.

For reservations and information call the Fitton at 863-8873.

Humana in high gear: Slightly further afield, the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville has kicked into high gear with five new plays performing in rep.

Among them is Cincinnati native Theresa Rebeck's Omnium-Gatherum written with Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros.

It's a Mad Hatter dinner party overseen by a Martha Stewart-esque hostess intent on ignoring the unnamed chaos and catastrophe heard just outside her firmly locked doors.

Written in response to 9-11, it plays Friday through Sunday next weekend.

Lots of other new work there by first-rate playwrights, including Kia Corthron's Slide Glide the Slippery Slope and Bridget Carpenter's The Faculty Room.

For reservations and information, call the box office at (502) 584-1205 or (800) 428-5849 or order online at actorstheatre.org.

E-mail jdemaline@enquirer.com.