The Ohio Arts Council will present unpredictable, inventive and off-the-wall performances by Robert Post in the Riffe Center’s Capitol Theatre during Columbus’s First Night celebration December 31.

Arts organizations will help Ohioans ring in 1999 during multicultural, alcohol-free First Night celebrations in five cities around the state.

First Night, an innovative New Year’s Eve program designed to be diverse, accessible and affordable, started in Boston in 1976. Since then, it has become an international celebration that strives to broaden and deepen public appreciation of the visual and performing arts.

The Ohio Arts Council will sponsor two events during First Night Columbus 1999 on December 31.

Riffe Gallery staff and volunteers will welcome children and their families from 7 to 10 p.m. in the High Street lobby outside the gallery in the Riffe Center, across from the Statehouse on High Street. Children will be invited to make soft, pipe-cleaner eyewear, embellished with beads, glitter and imagination. Due to the fragile nature of the current exhibition, Ohio Perspectives: Reflections in Glass, the gallery will not be open that evening.

The Ohio Arts Council’s Individual Artists Program will present performances by Robert Post in the Riffe Center’s Capitol Theatre at 8 and 10 p.m. Post’s one-man, tour de force theatre pieces have been described as zany, unpredictable, inventive and totally off-the-wall. He has been honored by the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, has toured internationally and has appeared on PBS.

For more information about First Night Columbus go to www.firstnightcols.com or call 614/481-0020.

Other Ohio cities sponsoring First Night celebrations this year are Akron, Lima, North Ridgeville and Toledo. For more information about First Night celebrations in those communities contact First Night International at 617/357-0065 or visit their web site at www.firstnightintl.org.