Critical Moment, a new two-actor play penned by two actor-playwrights as an acting project for themselves, gets a private reading in Manhattan under the direction of Karen Azenberg Sept. 10.

The play, by Stephen Kunken and Jeff Talbott, was a semi-finalist for Denver Center Theatre Company's TheatreFest 2001, and a section of the play was a finalist for the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville in 1999 for best 10 minute play of the year. This is the third reading of the developing piece. The authors perform the work.

Critical Moment is a series of seven conversations between pairs of men all taking place in the same booth of a coffeeshop in Manhattan. Designed to be played by the same two actors, the work "is about searching for an identity, both within oneself and within the world at large and about that 'critical moment' when it all might seem so clear to a casual observer," according to notes from the playwrights.

As actors, Kunken and Talbott appeared together in the first New York City revival of Arthur Laurents' Home of the Brave, for Jewish Repertory Theatre. Kunken, an acting alum of Juilliard School of Drama, is the current standby for the role of Hal in Broadway's Proof and will play the role in the 2001-2002 tour. Talbott, a Yale School of Drama acting alum, recently acted for director Azenberg in the Indiana Rep production of Enter the Guardsman. His previous plays, Tender and For Nate and Molly, were staged in the Yale Cabaret.

— By Robert Simonson