Free Readings of Churchill, Shepard, Durang, Rabe Works Featured in New Work Then! Series at Public | Playbill

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News Free Readings of Churchill, Shepard, Durang, Rabe Works Featured in New Work Then! Series at Public The Public Theater will present its annual free reading series, New Work Now!, as well as a special series, New Work Then!, featuring 10 works that were previously developed by the downtown establishment.

New Work Now! will run Sept. 9-18 and New Work Then! plays Sept. 23-Oct. 3 at the company's downtown home on Lafayette Street.

Veteran playwrights whose work will play in the Then! series include Caryl Churchill, Ntozake Shange, Sam Shepard, David Henry Hwang, Adrienne Kennedy, George C. Wolfe, Christopher Durang, Miguel Piñero, David Rabe and Roberto Athayde. Estelle Parsons, George C. Wolfe, Jerry Zaks and John Ortiz are among the directors for the returning works which will feature "stellar casts," according to an announcement, and include some original cast members.

The showcase for new work will include emerging and established scribes in 12 presentations culminating with an evening of solo performances, titled Rants, featuring the thoughts and voices of Eric Bogosian, Lea DeLaria, Florencia Lozano, Billy Porter, Jennifer Miller, Pamela Sneed and Mike Daisey.

The lineup for both series are as follows:

  NEW WORK NOW!

  • Cusi Cram's The End of It All (Sept. 9 - 7 PM)
    Margaret Whitton directs the 1928 Los Angeles-set story which follows the incidents and accidents that occur on and off the set of a "talkie."
  • Luther Goins's Love Child (Sept. 10 - 7 PM)
    Billy Porter directs the dark comedy centering on teenagers LaWanda, TaWanda, DaWanda and ShaWanda, sassy and smart young women who all have babies, some three.
  • Anuvab Pal's Life, Love and E.B.I.T.D.A. (Sept. 11 - 2 PM)
    John Dias directs the work which follows two women bankers and their devious plans to reshape the largest manhole-cover making company owned by wealthy London twins and run on toiling workers in India.
  • Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's Autobiography of a Terrorist (Sept. 11 - 6:30 PM)
    Anne Kauffman directs "an unruly narrative examining what it is to be Middle Eastern in America today" spanning the time from the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 to September 11th, 2001.
  • Julia Cho's Durango (Sept. 12 - 7 PM)
    Chay Yew directs the story of a suddenly widowed, single father who embarks on one more family road trip with his two sons to the titular Colorado town, each examining their sacrifices to be a good father, son, and man.
  • Ian Williams and Aaron Jafferis' Kingdom (Sept. 13 - 7 PM)
    With music by Williams and words by Jafferis, director Michael John Garcés stages the work in which "Juan and Andres pledge themselves to a Latino empowerment organization."
  • Desmond Hall's Stockholm Brooklyn (Sept. 14 - 7 PM)
    Writer-director Hall spins a tale of a recently-divorced and well-to-do accountant who is kidnapped at an ATM by two men and forced to withdraw his daily cash maximum in addition to counseling, helping the kids with their homework and doing everybody’s taxes.
  • Andrew Dainoff's All We Can Handle (September 15th - 7 PM)
    Alex Lippard directs this David-meets-Sally story where the protagonist follows her to New York and find his "journey is accelerated by terrorism, grief-stained sex, chain drinking, murder, jazz and phone sex culminating at the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge."
  • Steven Cosson and Michael Friedman's Paris Commune (Sept. 16 - 7 PM)
    Cosson directs his and Friedman's drama set in 1871's revolution-torn Paris in a work described as "Documentary theater meets French history, opera, café concert, and cabaret" by the company, The Civilians.
  • John Belluso's The Poor Itch (Sept. 17 - 7 PM)
    Lisa Peterson directs the play about an Iraq war soldier returning without the use of his legs but with a full supply of oxycontin. "Now, he has to deal with the person he was at home, the person he was at war and the person he is."
  • An untitled work by Sunil Kuruvilla (Sept. 18 - 2 PM)
    Liz Diamond directs this "comic-drama about the Indian Diaspora examining family and migration" which finds Queenie — who "thinks she is dying" — searching for a burial site amid rampant shopping malls and Baskin Robbins.
  • Rants (Sept. 18 - 6:30 PM)
    Written and performed by Eric Bogosian, Lea Delaria, Florencia Lozano, Billy Porter, Jennifer Miller, Pamela Sneed and Mike Daisey, the evening solo performances combines "improvisation and scripted material" speaking to "a desire for politically engaged theater told from a personal point of view." NEW WORK THEN!

     

  • Caryl Churchill's Top Girls (Sept. 23 - 7 PM)
  • Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf (Sept. 24 - 3 PM).
  • Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class (Sept. 23 - 7 PM).
  • David Henry Hwang F.O.B. (Sept. 24 - 7PM)
  • Adrienne Kennedy's A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White (Sept. 25 - 7PM). Directed by Estelle Parsons.
  • George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum (Sept. 29 - 7 PM). Directed by Wolfe.
  • Christopher Durang's The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Sept. 30th - 7 PM). Directed by Jerry Zaks.
  • Miguel Piñero's Short Eyes (Oct. 1 - 7 PM). Directed by John Ortiz.
  • David Rabe's The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (Oct. 2 - 7 PM)
  • Roberto Athayde's Miss Margarida's Way: Tragicomic Monologue for an Impetuous Woman (Oct. 3 - 7 PM) Starring Estelle Parsons. All New Work Now/Then! readings are free and open to the public.  Reservations (a limit of four reservations per reading) can be made by calling The Public Theater box office at (212) 260-2400.  Reserved tickets must be picked up 15 minutes prior to starting time, at which time unclaimed tickets will be released to people on the waiting list. For more information, visit www.publictheater.org.

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