It’s mid-afternoon on a Monday, in a third-floor room at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Franklin Street Gymnasium. Undergraduates in black workout attire stand in a circle, not far from an array of rapiers on the wooden floor. “The broadswords of the medieval period were basically sharp baseball bats,“ theater professor Aaron Anderson explains cheerily. He demonstrates how you’d wallop an opponent’s nose with the blunt end of a broadsword. His audience—undergraduate students in an advanced movement class—watch, rapt.

Henley Street Theatre Company artistic director James Ricks has crossed the Rubicon: He has bought a car. “I haven’t had a car since high school,“ the 35-year-old thespian said recently in an interview at Panera Bread at Willow Lawn shopping center. “I’ve been living in New York and D.C. for the last 15 years. I haven’t had any need for a car.“

If you love show tunes, you’re in luck. In addition to other fare around town in the next year, you’ll have access to “Richmond Loves Broadway,“ a new subscription series from Barksdale Theatre. 

It has been a tough year - but a transformational one - for African American Repertory Theatre, the Richmond troupe whose current production, “From the Mississippi Delta,“ runs through June 14 at Pine Camp Arts and Community Center. In October, the company’s founding artistic director, Derome Scott Smith, suffered a stroke that left him temporarily unable to talk. The medical crisis struck while AART was gearing up for the 2008-09 season’s first offering: August Wilson’s “Fences.“ Smith had been scheduled to stage the show, which had to be canceled.

Writer and performer R. Dale Smith steeled himself for audience walkouts when he presented his potentially controversial one-man show at Richmond’s 2008 Acts of Faith festival. But the offended viewers never materialized. Instead, “Jesus Phreak: The Story of a Very Unlikely Disciple” met with such encouragement that Smith - a VCU creative-writing graduate student who has taught in the university’s religious studies department - has taken it on the road.

If America could harness the vim that actress Audra Honaker brings to her latest gig, the country’s energy problems would be solved. In the Barksdale Theatre’s diverting production of Neil Simon’s comedy “I Ought To Be in Pictures,“ Honaker turbojets through the role of Libby, an eccentric 19-year-old who has barged in on the Hollywood home of her long-lost dad.

Audiences will have to strap on their psychological seat belts for “Normal,“ the rock musical that’s the latest offering from Stage 1 Theatre Company in Mechanicsville. At least, such is the opinion of several artists behind the production, running through April 25. “It takes you on a roller coaster,“ said Ali Thibodeau, who plays one of the lead roles, Polly, a teenager with an eating disorder.

Marriage to a dramatist has its pros and cons. On the downside, points out Richmond actress Jan Guarino - whose husband of two decades is writer Bo Wilson - your marital squabbles are likely to end up in a play. “I’ve learned to live with it,“ she says. On a more positive note, your spouse may eventually get around to penning a script specifically for you. That’s what happened with “Mona’s Arrangements,“ the world premiere musical running through April 19 at Barksdale Theatre’s Hanover Tavern. Wilson conceived the show as a vehicle for Guarino and Scott Wichmann - each of whom, in the playwright’s view, is “a force of nature when it comes to musical comedy.“

Henley Street Theatre Company is not known for playing it safe. Not yet two years old, the Richmond troupe has mounted such rarely staged fare as “The Spanish Tragedy,“ by 16th-century author Thomas Kyd, and “The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail,“ by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (who are better known for penning “Inherit the Wind”). To kick off its 2008-09 season, the company presented a multimedia “Richard III” that commented obliquely on 21st-century journalism.

I’m not going to let things stop me because I’m losing my hearing,“ actress Erica Siegel said as she sits in the Barksdale Theatre, where she has been spending many hours of late. “It’s just not worth it. So many people tell you that you can’t do something, and when you hear that enough, you do it, just to spite them!“ Humor tinges her words, but the 31-year-old performer’s resolution is real enough—and she will need every ounce of it as she gears up for her turn in “Children of a Lesser God,“ running at the Barksdale Friday through March 22.

As part of a five-year plan drawn up by Barksdale’s staff and board, the theater is striving to make its programming more accessible to groups that might not overlap with its traditional patrons. One performance of each show in the company’s 2008-09 season has been interpreted for hearing-impaired audiences. In future years, steps will be taken to address the needs of visually impaired audiences and those with physical disabilities, said Bruce Miller, Barksdale’s artistic director.

Ebenezer Scrooge and “The Santaland Diaries” starting to seem like the same old, same old? Deja vu might not be a problem at the Firehouse Theatre Project’s holiday show: “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant.“