Director Marion McClinton's Off-Broadway success with August Wilson's Jitney and Tony nomination for Wilson's King Hedley II have not transformed him into an exclusively-New York practitioner. McClinton honed his skills in the regions and he returns to his roots in the coming season. He will direct another Wilson play, Joe Turner's Come and Gone at Missouri Repertory Theatre in May 2002. And this fall, he will pilot Lorraine Hansberry's African-American classic, A Raisin in the Sun at Baltimore's Center Stage. The production will run Nov. 15-Dec. 23 in the Pearlstone Theatre.

Hansberry's groundbreaking work looks at Chicago's South Side in the early 1950s and the Younger family's efforts to rise above their station. No casting has been announced. A recent mounting at the Williamstown Theatre Festival starred Gloria Foster.

The Center Stage 2001-02 season will begin on a lighter note with the George Abbott-Richard Bissel-Richard Adler-Jerry Ross musical The Pajama Game, Oct. 12-Dec. 2 in the Head Theater. The tale of love among labor and management at the Sleep Tite Pajama Factory features the songs "Steam Heat" and "Hernando's Hideaway."

The season continues with Edward Albee's popular Pulitzer Prize play Three Tall Women, running Jan. 11-Feb. 10, 2002, in the Pearlstone, with Tim Vasen directing; the favorite Shakespeare problem play of the moment, A Winter's Tale, mounted by Center Stage artistic director Irene Lewis, Feb. 22-March 31, 2002, in the Pearlstone; Noel Coward's supernatural comedy of manners, Blithe Spirit, April 12-May 19, 2002, in the Pearlstone, with Vasen again at the helm; and a new play yet to be announced for the May 10-June 16, 2002, slot at the Head Theater.