New Off-Off-Bway Play Anthology to Be Published in February | Playbill

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News New Off-Off-Bway Play Anthology to Be Published in February New York Theatre Experience president Martin Denton has announced the publication of his new anthology, "Plays and Playwrights for the New Millennium." The trade paperback will be available Feb. 1.

New York Theatre Experience president Martin Denton has announced the publication of his new anthology, "Plays and Playwrights for the New Millennium." The trade paperback will be available Feb. 1.

The eight plays comprising the anthology feature works that have been produced in New York City, Off-Off Broadway, throughout 1998-99.

Described as running the gamut from farce to satire and comic drama, the works in the anthology include: Midnight Brainwash Revival by Kirk Wood Bromley, Horse Country by C. J. Hopkins, When Words Fail... by David Dannenfelser, Making Peter Pope by Edmund De Santis, Crunching Numbers by Lynn Marie Macy, Cafe Society by Robert Simonson, So, I Killed A Few People... by Gary Ruderman and David Summers, and Are We There Yet? by Garth Wingfield.

Edited by Martin Denton, "Plays and Playwrights for the New Millennium" is intended to provide industry professionals and theatre readers with access to new theatrical works. Denton, who is theatre critic for nytheatre.com, provides critical essays, playwright biographies, information about New York productions of the works, and guidelines to obtaining performance and production rights for each play.

Summarizing the plays featured in the anthology, nytheatre.com provided thumbnail sketches of each work: • Produced originally by the Inverse Theatre at the Kraine Theatre in New York City in December 1999, Kirk Wood Bromley's Midnight Brainwash Revival is a New Year's revel combining millennial madness and dazzling word play.

• Originally produced by The Present Company at the Theatorium in January 1999, C.J. Hopkins' Horse Country takes audiences to a bleak theatrical landscape where two actors explore the nature of what the playwright describes as "post-everything America."

• Another Theatorium production, which was later revised and produced by Eponymous Theatre at the John Houseman Studio Theatre, David Dannenfelser's When Words Fail... is a romantic fantasy where the human spirit triumphs over technological madness.

• First run by the Harbor Theatre In New York City in March 1999, Edmund De Santis' Making Peter Pope explores the mind of a gay man as he struggles to restore control of his life in the midst of very strained circumstances.

• Distilled Spirits Theatre Company produced Lynn Marie Macy's Crunching Numbers at New York City's Trilogy Theatre in Oct. 1998. Macy's play is a triptych of one-acts that focus on the pressures involved with turning 30.

• The Manhattan Playhouse first produced Cafe Society by Playbill On-Line editor Robert Simonson in Feb. 1998. In this comedy, a demonic coffee shop counter girl befriends an ordinary young woman with gleefully satiric results.

• The Annoyance Theatre Production of Gary Ruderman and David Summers' So, I Killed a Few People... in Chicago predated the 1998 New York International Fringe Festival version by a year. This play involves a monologue by a serial killer who, as his last request, seeks to put on a one-man show.

Originally produced by New Voices Theatre Ensemble at Synchronicity Space in New York City, in April 1999, Garth Wingfield's Are We There Yet? is a bittersweet comic drama about a young woman who takes an insightful and inspiring journey after receiving some disturbing medical news.

"Plays and Playwrights for the New Millennium" runs 384 pages and is available for $14 through these outlets: nytheatre.com, Amazon Books, a variety of independent and theatrical bookstores nationally, and in New York City at Drama Books, Applause Books and Samuel French, Inc.

-- By Murdoch McBride

 
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