The mainstage season at the 73-seat space begins Sept. 2-25 with a world premiere, The Trial, taken from the classic by Franz Kafka. KTC artistic director Rachel Lampert directs the play about Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes one day to find himself accused and arrested for a crime whose nature is never revealed to him.

As with the recent Frankenstein project, the KTC production will be part of a city-wide reading initiative that gets citizens to open the same book, prompting city-wide conversation and exploration of the same piece of literature.

Michael Healey's popular regional play, The Drawer Boy runs Oct. 21-Nov. 13. In it, "two Canadian farmers, boyhood friends and World War II veterans, share a mysterious secret, until the day their rural workaday lives are disrupted by a young city actor." Jesse Bush directs.

Precious Nonsense, the new musical comedy borrowing music and lyrics by Gilbert & Sullivan, plays Jan. 13-Feb. 12, 2005, under Lampert's direction.

Pamela Gien's portrait of her extended South African family, The Syringa Tree, plays March 3-26, 2005, directed by Sara Lampert Hoover. Ron Munro's Iron, about a daughter reunited with her convicted-murderer mum, plays April 21-May 14, 2005. Gia Forakis directs.

A world premiere new comedy will be announced, to run July 7-30, 2005.

Subscriptions are available. For more information, call (607) 272-0403, or visit www.kitchentheatre.org.

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KTC is located in the historic Clinton House, a renovated hotel in downtown Ithaca. The city, home to Cornell University, is located on the southern tip of Cayuga Lake in central New York.