The Jeanine Tesori-Brian Crawley musical Violet will receive its Southeastern premiere at the PlayMakers Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, NC. The Richard Rodgers Award-winner, about a country girl who travels cross country in the hope that a televangelist will heal her scarred face, will close the company 's 1998-99 season, running Apr. 21-May 16, 1999.

The PlayMakers season will open with Shakespeare's tale of revenge and forgiveness The Tempest (Sept. 23-Oct. 18) and continue with Moises Kaufman's Off-Broadway hit Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (Oct. 28-Nov. 22).

Next in the line-up is a one-man holiday presentation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol (Dec. 2-20), performed by Ray Dooley and adapted by William Leach. The season's fourth slot (Feb. 3-28) is yet to be decided, though Emily Mann's Having Our Say: The Delaney Sisters' First 100 Years is being considered.

The Show-Off (Mar. 10-Apr. 4), the George Kelly classic about a garrulous schemer in 1920s Philadelphia, comes next, followed by Violet. For information on any of these productions, call (919)-962 7529.

-- By Robert Simonson