69-year-old playwright and linguist Douglas Mitchell will be Houston's Stages Repertory Theatre's Playwright-in-Residence for the 2000-01 season. The spring will see a festival of his one-act works from April 28-May 13.

Stages Rep artistic director Rob Bundy picked the playwright whose work he first saw in the back room of a Mexican restaurant three years ago. He describes Mitchell as "Samuel Beckett meets Harold Pinter."

The festival in May will feature seven plays: "It's Got to Be Something," "It's Hard to Say," "Push and Pull," "Any Old Passion," "All Wrapped Up," "The Throwaways" and "How to Sacrifice a Child."

A linguist with Rice University for 20 years, Mitchell began writing plays in 1990. Outside of Texas, he will receive an Oct. production of his Old Friends alongside Edward Albee's Zoo Story directed by Albee in the Netherlands as well as several planned performances of his works in Germany.

-- By Christine Ehren