PROGRAM NOTES: Sledgehammer Theatre’s next show in...

PROGRAM NOTES: Sledgehammer Theatre’s next show in the Progressive Stage Company space will be Georg Buchner’s “Leonce und Lena” Nov. 17. Scott Feldsher. Sledgehammer’s artistic director, will direct. . . .

Tony-award winning director Lloyd Richards will be coming to San Diego a few months before he is due to direct August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” at the Old Globe Theatre. Richards is the keynote speaker at UC San Diego’s conference on Cultural Diversity in the American Theatre Nov. 8-11. Writer, director and Teatro Campesino artistic director Luis Valdez will appear as the Helen Edison Lecturer for UCSD Extension. . . .

The Southeast Community Theatre will bring Langston Hughes’ “Black Nativity” back for its third year in a row. It will play at the Educational Cultural Complex Nov. 28-Dec. 16 under the direction of UC San Diego professor Floyd Gaffney. . . .

Meanwhile, Langston Hughes is just one of the many Harlem Renaissance characters in “The Life and Life of Bumpy Johnson,” the San Diego Rep world premiere that will have its first workshop reading this weekend at Newark Symphony Hall in Newark, N.J. . . .

Bryan Scott, one of the co-producers and co-creators of San Diego’s “Suds” went to London and got a staff writing job with the British Broadcasting System. The television show is the Jonathan Ross Show and is reportedly the British equivalent of the David Letterman show. . . .

The Old Globe will need two actors to fill actor Richard Easton’s shoes when Easton misses two performances of “Hamlet” to take a part in the new Kenneth Branagh film “Dead Again.” Easton had been playing a double role as the Ghost and Claudius. William Anton will fill in as Claudius and MFA student Will Crawford will play the Ghost Oct. 9 and 10. . . .

Old Globe associate artist Kandis Chappell will play a television producer in the fourth episode of this season’s “L.A. Law.” John Vickery, whose last San Diego appearance was as the bloody “Macbeth” at the La Jolla Playhouse, will soon get a chance to sink his teeth into something really ruthless; he portrays Chappell’s lawyer. . . .

The San Diego Theatre League will offer $5 Sneak Preview tickets to the Nov. 7 dress rehearsal of the North Coast Repertory Theatre’s “The 1940s Radio Hour”. . . .