BAGHDAD, Sept 18, 2007 (AFP) - They are rehearsing at a secret venue in Baghdad and their next performance will be sometime soon at a time and place only a select few will get to know. And then only at the very last minute.

Nothing like Broadway, of course, but it's going to be showtime in the Iraqi capital again, folks. The country's most famous musical troupe, the National Folklore Ensemble, will once again be taking the stage.

BEIJING, Sept 17, 2007 (AFP) - After storming their way across most of the world, hit musicals 'Lesotho Miserables' and 'Phantom of the Opera' are to open in Chinese-language versions here next year, their publicist said Monday.

Sir Cameron Mackintosh, the British producer of the musicals, signed a deal with an agency under China's ministry of culture to bring Chinese versions of the shows to the country and to train local performers for the stage.

PRAGUE, Sept 15, 2007 (AFP) - Czech former president and playwright Vaclav Havel ended an ongoing drama over where his first play for over 18 years will be premiered on Saturday by naming the Prague theatre selected for the honour.

The play, 'Odchazeni (Departing)', will be premiered at Prague's Vinohrady theatre with Havel's actress wife, Dagmar, guaranteed a part, Havel declared in an interview with the left-leaning Pravo daily.

LONDON, Sept 11, 2007 (AFP) - Hollywood hearthrob Jude Law is to star as William Shakespeare's Hamlet in London's West End, one of the city's best-known theatres announced Tuesday.

The 34-year-old British star of 'The Talented Mr Ripley' and 'The Road To Perdition' will perform in a production directed by Kenneth Branagh which is to open in mid-2009, the Donmar Warehouse said.

MOSCOW, Sept 10, 2007 (AFP) - The founder and director of Uzbekistan's only private theatre has been stabbed to death, one of his actors said on Monday.

Mark Weil, 55-year-old head of the Ilkhom theatre, known for its unorthodox productions during and since the Soviet period, was beaten and then stabbed in the stomach by two attackers as he returned home on the night of September 6-7, said the actor, Boris Gafurov.

He died of his wounds in hospital.

PRAGUE, Aug 25, 2007 (AFP) - Czech former president and playwright Vaclav Havel has caused a drama over where the premiere of his first first play in more than 18 years will be held, saying on Saturday that foreign as well as local theatres are vying for the honour.

'There is interest in the play from foreign as well as local theatres...,' the leader of the Velvet Revolution, which overthrew the Communist regime in 1989, told Saturday's edition of the Czech daily Lidove Noviny.

LONDON, Aug 2, 2007 (AFP) - A satirical musical about Islamist terrorism and Al-Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has sparked protests in Britain, with critics blasting it as tasteless.

'Jihad: The Musical,' which features songs including 'I wanna be like Osama' and is described as 'a madcap gallop through the wacky world of international terrorism,' is on at the Edinburgh Fringe festival this month.

But a petition has been launched on Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Downing Street website.

FREETOWN, July 31, 2007 (AFP) - Musicians and other performers in Sierra Leone on Monday rallied against election-related violence at the start of a two-week nationwide campaign for political tolerance.

Dubbed 'Artists for Peace', about a dozen performers, all dressed in white to show their non-affiliation to any of the seven political parties contesting August 11 elections, set off for a 10-day tour.

LONDON, July 30, 2007 (AFP) - Kelly Osbourne, the daughter of notorious rock wildman Ozzy Osbourne, is to star in the musical 'Chicago' in London, the show announced Monday.

The 22-year-old British singer will play prison matron Mama Morton for seven weeks at the Cambridge Theatre from September 10 to October 27.

Osbourne is the youngest performer to take on the role as she makes her debut in the West End theatre district.

LONDON, July 30, 2007 (AFP) - More than 120 actors, writers and directors have signed a letter in Monday's edition of The Times protesting plans to close Britain's oldest working theatre, the Bristol Old Vic, for 18 months.

The Old Vic, which opened in 1766, is a pillar of Britain's theatrical community and has nurtured the careers of generations of great actors including Peter O'Toole and Daniel Day-Lewis.

BERLIN, July 24, 2007 (AFP) - Renowned Hungarian-born British writer and theatre director George Tabori has died in Berlin at the age of 93 after a long illness, colleagues said on Tuesday.

Charles Peymann, the director of the Berliner Ensemble theatre founded by German playwright Bertolt Brecht, said Tabori had in recent weeks received actors with whom he was working on a play at his bedside to discuss the piece.