For the second year in a row, Vista-based stage hypnotist James Kellogg Jr. will offer a fundraising performance at the Avo Playhouse in Vista.

As he did last January, Kellogg will donate all proceeds from the show to the Vista Girls Soccer Booster Club.

Kellogg's 90-minute show will involve calling volunteers up from the audience to take part in a PG-rated program of entertainment. Describing his show last year, Kellogg said "People are doing things they wouldn't normally think of doing. We stay in the realm of protection. I would never ask them to do something like jump off a roof. But the things they do do, well, their friends tell me later they're things their friend wouldn't normally do. I had one lady whose friend told her it would be an X-rated show and she kept waking up every few minutes. But that's not my style."

Kellogg started out as a clinical hypnotist, helping people to quit smoking and to lose weight. It didn't take long for him to discover the possibilities of hypnotism for the stage. He created a 90-minute show that includes music.

Kellogg's performance is at 6 p.m. Sunday at the Avo Playhouse, 303 Main St. in Vista. Tickets cost $15. Call (760) 724-2110.

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North Coast Repertory Theatre's fall production of the farce "Don't Dress for Dinner" was such a success, that the theater has decided to revive the show next summer.

The zany British comedy (based on a French sex farce about a philandering married couple trying to hide their secret lovers) will be restaged July 17 through Aug. 2 at the Solana Beach theater.

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Yet another menopausal musical will soon arrive in San Diego.

"Hats! The Musical" will launch its 20-week national tour Feb. 27 at the Spreckels Theater in San Diego. It's the story of a woman turning 50 with the support and sympathy of her six best girlfriends. The musical has a book by Marcia Milgrom and Anthony Dodge and an original 12-song score by songwriters Melissa Manchester, Pam Tillis, Henry Krieger and Kathy Lee Gifford.

"Hats!" will be playing next door to the Lyceum, where "Menopause the Musical" played to cheering, capacity crowds of "women of a certain age" in 2007.

For tickets, call (619) 235-9500 or hatsthemusical.com.

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A new short film by San Diego filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton will be screened this month at the 25th annual Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

"Short Term 12" is a 22-minute drama based on Cretton's own experiences working as a child-care worker at a residential treatment center in San Diego. Actor Brad William Henke stars as a young care worker whose personal problems collide with the struggles of 15 abused children in his care at the Short Term 12 center.

The film will premiere at Sundance and then will move on to the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in France (one of three U.S. films in the competition).

Cretton, a graduate of Point Loma Nazarene and San Diego State universities, works as a video production teacher at Canyon Crest Academy in San Diego. "Short Term 12" is not Cretton's first feature. In 2007, his and Lowell Frank's fantasy role-playing documentary "Drakmar: A Vassal's Journey" was shown on HBO. And in 2006, his and Frank's "Bartholomew's Song," a film about a futuristic factory worker, won the "Best of the Fest" award at the BestFest American Film Festival of college films.

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San Diego Opera's 2009 season will kick off this month with Puccini's "Tosca" and to help get showgoers in the mood, the company's education department will present its ninth annual lecture preview series at Carlsbad's Schulman Auditorium.

Musicologist Ron Shaheen will present a lecture complete with recorded excerpts from the opera for each of the five productions this season. The free lectures (at 10 a.m. Saturdays) usually draw from 180 to 200 people, so to control the sometimes-capacity crowds, lecture-goers are asked to arrive by 9:15 a.m. when tickets will be distributed while supplies last. Doors open at 9:40 a.m.

The series begins Jan. 24 with a lecture on "Tosca." Next up is a lecture on Jules Massenet's "Don Quixote" at 10 a.m. Feb. 14. Verdi's "Rigoletto" will be discussed at 10 a.m. March 28. Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes" is the topic at 10 a.m. April 18 and Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" is the subject at 10 a.m. May 9.

The Schulman Auditorium is at 1775 Dove Lane in Carlsbad. For details, visit carlsbadca.gov/arts.

Pam Kragen is the arts editor of the North County Times.