A retired couple excavating arrowheads in New Mexico end up unearthing their own lives in the world premiere of Ron McLarty's The Folsom Head, opening at Off Broadway's Currican Theatre Nov. 23. Previews began Nov. 23 for a run through Dec. 21.

Kerry Butler, one of the former Belles in Broadway's Beauty and the Beast shares the Currican Productions presentation with Sam Freed, Andrew Elvis Miller (artistic director of Currican Productions) and Barry Youngfellow (Jan from TV's "It's a Living").

The play, directed by Currican producing director Amy Kiehl, has a supernatural tone: Set on a Native American burial ground, phantoms are conjured. Butler and Miller play the ghosts, and Youngfellow and Freed play the archaeologists.

McLarty is an actor-playwright whose plays include The Dropper (winner of the Norfolk Southern Festival of New Works Award) and Aleka (presented by the Road Theater Company in Los Angeles), among others. His work has appeared at INTAR, Library Theatre at Lincoln Center, the Triangle Theater, and with the Lion Theater Company. As an actor, he has appeared on Broadway, Off Broadway and London, and he appears on NBC's fall 1998 series, "Trinity," as Father Dunnagh. He lives in Montclair, NJ.

The Currican is at 154 W. 29th St. in New York City. For tickets ($25) call, (212) 736-2533. -- By Kenneth Jones
and Robert Simonson