After canceling all but one of its 2023 shows, St. Paul’s Park Square Theatre has announced its new 2024/2025 season, which includes four major productions.

“We are beyond excited to not only bring outstanding productions to our stage but also to have a world premier be part of this strong season,” said Park Square artistic director Stephen DiMenna in a news release. “We worked hard to choose plays that can serve as vehicles for many of the Twin Cities most acclaimed and favorite actors while also making opportunities for younger actors to develop their craft.”

Under the guidance of DiMenna, who was named executive artistic director in October, the theater’s staff and board spent the past eight months “engaged in a brand audit of the theater’s past programming, mission, purpose and vision to create a plan for the theater’s future.”

After looking at what other theaters in the metro were programming, Park Square decided to focus on contemporary American plays and re-imagined American classics with an emphasis on the actors and artists who create the work. Park Square’s new brand is “The Stories You Want to See with the Artists You Love” and its new logo symbolizes an open door where all are welcome.

The theme of the upcoming season, the theater’s 49th, is “New Beginnings — Plays about redemption, renewal and rebirth.” The season includes:

• “Holmes/Poirot” (Oct. 9-Nov. 3): This world premiere co-written by Twin Cities playwright Jeffrey Hatcher and actor Steve Hendrickson tells a “tale of intrigue, international politics, wine and murder” involving Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.

• “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” (Dec. 4-22): Adapted for the stage by Barbara Robinson from her much-loved children’s book of the same name, this show inaugurates Park Square’s new Family Series.

• “The Gin Game” (Feb. 5-23): A new take on D. L. Coburn’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play will star locals Greta Oglesby and Terry Hempleman.

• “Between Riverside and Crazy” (May 14-June 8): The 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy/drama by Stephen Adly Guirgis follows an ex-cop and recent widower and his recently paroled son as they struggle to hold onto one of the last rent-stabilized apartments on Riverside Drive in New York City.

For further details, see parksquaretheatre.org.

Park Square canceled five of its planned 2023 productions, citing the pandemic and slow ticket sales. The company’s sole 2023 play was “The Revolutionists,” a co-production with PRIME Productions that ran in April.

Park Square started in 1975 with 70 seats and has grown to a multi-stage, 550-seat professional theater. In August 2020, Park Square and SteppingStone Theatre for Youth announced they were becoming partners due to prepandemic debt issues. SteppingStone later moved into Park Square’s home in the historic Hamm Building in downtown St. Paul.

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By DAVID KLEPPER (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — With only five months before voters head to the polls, the U.S. may be more vulnerable to foreign disinformation aimed at influencing voters and undermining democracy than it was before the 2020 election, the leader of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Monday.

Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, based his warning on several factors: improved disinformation tactics by Russia and China, the rise of domestic candidates and groups who are themselves willing to spread disinformation, and the arrival of artificial intelligence programs that allow the rapid creation of images, audio and video difficult to tell from the real thing.

In addition, tech companies have rolled back their efforts to protect users from misinformation even as the government’s own attempts to combat the problem have become mired in debates about surveillance and censorship.

As a result, the U.S. could face a greater threat of foreign disinformation ahead of the 2024 election than it did in the 2016 or 2020 presidential election cycles, Warner said.

“We may be less prepared 155 days out in 2024 than we were under President Trump (in 2020),” Warner told The Associated Press in an interview Monday.

Noting similar campaigns in 2016 and 2020, security officials, democracy activists and disinformation researchers have warned for years that Russia, China, Iran and domestic groups within the U.S. will use online platforms to spread false and polarizing content designed to influence the race between Trump, a Republican, and President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

Warner’s assessment of America’s vulnerability comes just weeks after top security officials told the Intelligence Committee that the U.S. has greatly improved its ability to combat foreign disinformation.

Several new challenges, however, will make safeguarding the 2024 election different than past cycles.

AI programs have already been used to generate misleading content, such as a robocall that mimicked the voice of Biden telling New Hampshire voters not to cast a ballot in that state’s primary. Deceptive deepfakes created with AI programs have also popped up ahead of elections in India, Mexico, Moldova, Slovakia and Bangladesh.

Attempts by federal agencies to communicate with tech companies about disinformation campaigns have been complicated by court cases and debates over the role of government in monitoring political discourse.

Tech platforms have largely moved away from aggressive policies prohibiting election misinformation. X, formerly Twitter, laid off most of its content moderators in favor of a hands-off approach that now allows Neo-Nazi hate speech, Russian propaganda and disinformation.

Last year YouTube, owned by Google, reversed its policy prohibiting debunked election claims and now allows videos that argue the 2020 election was the result of widespread fraud.

Questions about China’s influence over TikTok prompted Congress to pass a law that would ban the popular site in the U.S. if its Beijing-based owner refuses to divest.

Meta, the owner of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, prohibits information that interferes with elections and says it will label content made with AI. But the company is also allowing political advertisements that claim the 2020 election was rigged, which critics say undercuts its promises.

“I’m not sure that these companies, other than the press release, have done anything in a meaningful way,” Warner said.

Representatives from Meta, X and TikTok did not immediately respond to messages on Monday.

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By MARK KENNEDY (AP Entertainment Writer)

NEW YORK (AP) — Janis Paige, a popular actor in Hollywood and in Broadway musicals and comedies who danced with Fred Astaire, toured with Bob Hope and continued to perform into her 80s, has died. She was 101.

Paige died Sunday of natural causes at her Los Angeles home, longtime friend Stuart Lampert said Monday.

Paige starred on Broadway with Jackie Cooper in the mystery-comedy, “Remains to be Seen” and appeared with John Raitt in the smash hit musical “The Pajama Game.”

Her other films included a Hope comedy, “Bachelor in Paradise”; the Doris Day comedy “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” and “Follow the Boys.”

In 2018, she added her voice to the #MeToo movement, alleging an assault when she was 22 by the late department-store heir Alfred Bloomingdale.

“I could feel his hands, not only on my breasts, but seemingly everywhere. He was big and strong, and I began to fight, kick, bite and scream,” she wrote. “At 95, time is not on my side, and neither is silence. I simply want to add my name and say, ‘Me too.’”

Paige’s big break came in wartime when she sang an operatic aria for servicemen at the Hollywood Canteen. MGM hired her a day later for a brief role in “Bathing Beauty” — she spoke two lines in the film, which starred Esther Williams and Red Skelton — then dropped her.

The same day, Warner Bros. signed her and cast her in a dramatic segment of the all-star movie “Hollywood Canteen.” Her contract started at $150 a week. “I earned more per week than my mother had made in a month during the Great Depression,” she recalled in The Hollywood Reporter in 2018.

Her salary rose to $1,000 weekly as the studio kept her busy in lightweight films such as “Two Guys from Milwaukee,” “The Time, the Place and the Girl,” Love and Learn,” “Always Together,” “Wallflower” and “Romance on the High Seas,” which marked Doris Day’s film debut.

Meanwhile, she had changed her name from Donna May Tjaden, adopting her grandfather’s name of Paige. She took her first name from Elsie Janis, famed for entertaining troops in World War I.

Paige’s contract expired in 1949, at a time when studios were unloading talent because of the inroads of television. “That was a jolt,” she remarked in 1963. “It meant I was washed up at 25.”

She took her talents to Broadway, where she starred in “Remains to Be Seen” (her role would be snatched by June Allyson for the screen adaptation), and starred as Babe opposite Raitt as Sid in the original production of “The Pajama Game,” directed in 1954 by George Abbott. (Doris Day would take her role in the film version.)

MGM producer Arthur Freed caught her nightclub act at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and offered her a part opposite Astaire in “Silk Stockings,” also co-starring Cyd Charisse. The film is famous for her and Astaire spoofing the newfangled movie gimmicks in the Cole Porter number “Stereophonic Sound,” including swinging from a chandelier.

“I was one mass of bruises. I didn’t know how to fall. I didn’t know how to get down on a table — I didn’t know how to save myself because I was never a classic dancer,” she told the Miami Herald in 2016.

In May 2003, Paige resumed entertaining after a long absence. She opened a show she called “The Third Act” at San Francisco’s Plush Room. She told stories about Astaire, Frank Sinatra and others and sang tunes from her films and stage musicals.

Chad Jones, reviewer for the Alameda Times-Star, commented that at 80 “the charming Paige shows a vitality, verve and spirit that performers half her age would envy.”

Paige grew up in Tacoma, Washington. Her father deserted the family when she was 4, and her mother eked out a living at the Bank of Tacoma.

“We always had enough to eat,” Paige told the Saturday Evening Post in 1963, “but nothing to spare. My mother worked so hard. And she used to keep saying that she wished I’d been born a boy, so I could help out more. I always wanted to be a success for her, to make up for my father.”

After leaving Warner Bros., she turned to TV, starring in a 1955-1956 TV series, “It’s Always Jan” and playing recurring roles in “Flamingo Road,” “Santa Barbara,” “Eight Is Enough,” “Capitol,” “Fantasy Island” and “Trapper Jon, M.D.” On “All in the Family,” she played a diner waitress who becomes involved with Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker.

Paige replaced Angela Lansbury in the New York production of “Mame” in 1968 on Broadway and toured with the show in 1969. She also toured in “Gypsy,” “Annie Get Your Gun,” “Born Yesterday” and “The Desk Set.” Her last time on Broadway was in 1984’s “Alone Together.”

She also supplied glamor for Hope’s Christmas visits to Cuba and the Caribbean in 1960, Japan and South Korea in 1962, and Vietnam in 1964. She sang in clubs with Sammy Davis Jr., Alan King, Dinah Shore and Perry Como.

She had two brief marriages, to San Francisco restaurateur Frank Martinelli and to writer-producer Arthur Stander. In 1962 she married songwriter Ray Gilbert, who won an Oscar for the song “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Da” from Disney’s “Song of the South.” He died in 1976, and she assumed management of his music company.

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits