Janeane Garofalo, who has lately evinced an interest in theatre, is currently starring in a New York City workshop of six short plays, performed under the title The Velvet Vise (Six Takes on the Search for Companionship). The month-long project, however, will end on Dec. 18. The Velvet Vise workshop will be at New York Performance Works, 85 W. Broadway (at Chambers Street). Remaining performances take place Dec. 15-18, but a production spokesperson says the run is sold out.

The evening features works by John Guare, Elizabeth Benjamin, Craig Carlisle, Jamie Gorenberg, Alice O'Neill and Tom Shillue. Gordon Greenberg will direct.

Recently, it was announced that Garofalo would star in a new Off- Broadway production of a play by Fuddy Meers scribe David Lindsay Abaire in spring 2000. Christopher Ashley will direct the play, about "a woman desperately trying to escape a world of squelched dreams, equipped with little more than a sliver of hope and brazen caustic wit."

Garofalo, an iconoclastic comedienne, has, over the last few years, found a career in alternative films such as "Reality Bites," "The Truth About Cats and Dogs," "Mystery Men," "The Cable Guy," "Cop Land" and "Permanent Midnight."

Vise's six works include The Wild by Shillue; The Face of the Written Word by Carlisle; Big Wet Kiss by Benjamin; And Many More... by Gorenberg; What I Came For by O'Neill; and The Talking Dog by Guare. The sextet of dramas tracks a man and woman from through first date, first affair, fear of commitment, moving on, breaking up and finally, marriage. Also starring in the workshop are Brian D'Arcy James (Titanic), Penny Balfour, Nathan Dean and the playwright Shillue himself.

--By Robert Simonson