Alex Dremann and Katharine Clark Gray are the chosen playwrights for the full productions.

PTW will kick off its season with the world premiere of Alex Dremann's The :nv:s:ble Play, Nov. 21-Dec. 13. Dremann is a local playwright who has had work premiered in California and New York. His Postcoital Variations was the first play produced by Philadelphia Theatre Workshop.

Here's how PTW bills the play: "Welcome to the Existential Publishing Company. Some people are being laid off — given a box to pack up their things and get out. Others are simply vanishing — literally. Colin can't decide which is worse. He's fighting to stay visible to win the heart of lovely Fran in the next cubicle. Tim, a handsome assistant editor, is busy sucking up as a means of survival. Nancy, the boss, is oblivious to everything. The rest of the office includes Ramona, the mysterious plant waterer; Carmen, a sassy and sexy and very pregnant assistant editor; Cass, who's 'too old to deal with this sh*t'; and Lawrence, the I.T. guy whom no one's really ever seen. Who can avoid the 'HR box of death'? or worse yet, complete invisibility?"

Philadelphia Theatre Workshop will produce its third annual PlayShop Festival, showcasing "four plays in process," March 6-21, 2010. The festival will give audiences a chance to give feedback about new works, and playwrights have the option to rewrite during the run of the festival.

The season will close with the world premiere of 516 (five sixteen) by Katharine Clark Gray, May 15-June 6, 2010. The play had a workshop production at the New York International Fringe Festival. She was a 2008 PEW Fellow in playwriting and wrote BRAT Productions' User 927. Here's how the play is billed: "Don't call her a ghostwriter; Annalee is a professional term paper auteur. Then she meets Sigurd, a cocky grad student who hires her to pen his 'chore' assignments while he works on a mysterious thesis. When the two become lovers, they find themselves embroiled in a blood-sport romance that leads to betrayal. When a stricken Annalee exposes their arrangement, they must both confront Sigurd's professor Martie Hodge. They strike a deal saving their skins, but Martie is exacting in her price. Driven by pride, desire, and intellectual longing, 516 (five sixteen) is a revenge romance for brainiacs, a mash note to the mind."

The two produced plays will appear at Walnut Street Theatre's Studio 5. The Playshops Festival will be at the Shubin Theatre. PTW's artistic director is Bill Felty.

Subscriptions cost $50 and are available at www.philadelphiatheatreworkshop.org.