When director/designer Stefano Brancato characterizes his forthcoming theatre workshops as "boot camp," the description is initially surprising, considering that the focus of the week-long area courses is puppetry. After all, as the 30-year-old Brooklyn resident says, "in a lot of puppetry, the performer, the puppeteer, is in a kind of static position," and not necessarily part of a piece's main action.

Yet for the two workshops that he'll be conducting through Davenport Junior Theatre - one designed for ages 10 through 18, one ages 18 and older, and both running June 14 through 19 - "boot camp" does seem an appropriate phrase, as Brancato states that he and Junior Theatre's artistic director, Daniel D.P. Sheridan, were hoping to "break the rules a little bit" in terms of what a puppetry course could entail.

As with summer movies, the area's summer-theatre scene - featuring, at last count, a whopping 68 productions scheduled by 22 organizations - is jam-packed with escapist fare: musicals, comedies, mysteries, musical-comedy mysteries. But like the random art-house release that manages to sneak into Hollywood's blockbuster-centric season, this summer will also feature occasional dramas and classical works, plus no less than four Pulitzer Prize-winners - five, if you count one of them being produced at two separate venues.

As I watched Friday's performance of Any Number Can Die at the Playcrafters Barn Theatre, I tried to remember that there was (probably) a time when Fred Carmichael's script was considered hilarious. As a spoof of murder mysteries of the 1920s, this 1965 work may originally have been fresh, poking fun at the plays that audiences were used to seeing. Now, though, with so many comedies poking fun at murder-mystery clichés - and with one seemingly presented each year by Playcrafters - the jokes at the expense of the clichés have themselves become cliché. Still, Carmichael's script and Playcrafters' production of it are amusing enough to make the show at least tolerable.

Henry Rollins' career has found him fronting the seminal hardcore band Black Flag as well as the Rollins Band, acting (in movies such as Heat and Lost Highway and the TV show Sons of Anarchy), hosting radio and television shows, writing books, and blogging for Vanity Fair. (He also made an appearance on the Flaming Lips' re-creation of The Dark Side of the Moon.) He's currently on a "talking" tour -- he says he dislikes the phrase "spoken word" -- that will stop at Davenport's Capitol Theatre on May 15.

Rollins' "Frequent Flyer" show covers his recent world travels. "Mid-October to mid-January ... I went all over the world just by myself with some camera gear and a backpack," he explained in one interview. "I started in Jordan and bounced through Saudi Arabia, the Brunei, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, China, Senegal, Mali, and then Dublin."

Because he was touring in Australia and Africa, Rollins wasn't available for a phone interview. But he graciously answered questions via e-mail.