Kathleen Chalfant doesn't leave Off-Broadway's Wit until Aug. 8, but that doesn't mean she's been laying low on other projects until then. She participated in the June 30 "Winning The Peace" readings of letters penned by Kosovars and Serbians, she's been tentatively slated to star in Sybille Pearson's True History and Real Adventures at the Vineyard Theatre this coming season, and she recently joined the board of Theatre Communications Group.

July 19 will find Chalfant busy yet again. She'll be playing Eugene O'Neill's mother, Ella, in a reading of Miles To Babylon by Ann Harson. Playgoers generally think of Ella as the morphine-addicted spectre embodied in Mary Tyrone of Long Day's Journey Into Night, but in real life she ultimately joined a convent and kicked her morphine habit.

Trish Hawkins, the original star of Lanford Wilson's Talley's Folly, co-stars in Babylon. Hawkins last returned to the New York stage in Jan Buttram's Private Battles at the Judith Anderson Theatre in 1998. Hawkins was a veteran of many early Circle Repertory Theatre productions, including Hot L Baltimore and The Moundbuilders. Other credits include Tennessee Williams' Battle of Angels and David Story's The Farm.

Harson's drama will be read at Primary Stages, July 19, at 7 PM. Admission is free; for reservations call (212) 932-8488.

-- By David Lefkowitz