If the lineup includes such titles as Girl Scouts of America, The Rats Are Getting Bigger and Pyretown, you know its "New Works Now!," The Public Theater's annual spring reading series of edgy and odd new scripts by familiar and unknown playwrights.
Among this year's highlights are two new scripts from a couple of writers well known to The Public. Lisa Kron, who had a hit at the theatre with 2.5 Minute Ride, revisits her racially- divided childhood neighborhood in Well. Nilo Cruz—who saw his Two Sisters and a Piano produced at The Public—returns with The Beauty of the Father, about a dad who is visited by his daughter and the ghost of Federico Garcia Lorca.
Rinne Groff, the rising downtown author of Inky and Jimmy Carter Was a Democrat, will be represented by Orange Lemon Egg Canary, about a magician called simply Great and his signature trick, The Hypnotic Balance. Heather Woodbury, the noted monologuist, who has exhibited her work at Surf Reality in NYC and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, will bring her Tale of 2Cities: An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks—a typically long piece which will be presented over two nights. And Hazelle Goodman will offer Hazelle on Edge, a piece she has been developing at various Manhattan locales for over a year.
The complete schedule is as follows:
April 28: Girl Scouts of America by Andrea Berloff and Mona Mansour
April 29 and 30: Tale of 2Cities: An American Joyride on Mulitple Tracks by Heather Woodbury, Part 1 on April 29, Part II on April 30
May 1: The Rats Are Getting Bigger by Julia Edwards
May 2: The Muckle Man by Roberto Aguirre Sacasa
May 3: Orange Lemon Egg Canary by Rinne Groff
May 4: 80 Teeth, 4 Feet and 500 Pounds by Gustavo Ott, translated by Heather McKay
May 5: A Human Interest Story or The Gory Details and All
May 6: New Composers Now!: Florida, music by Randall Egg, text by Donna Di Novelli; The Tutor, music by Andrew Gerle, text by Maryrose Wood; Sunday, a Musical Fable, music by Bruce Monroe, text by Alva Rogers
May 7: Well by Lisa Kron
May 8: Pyretown by John Belluso
May 9: Hazelle on Edge by Hazelle Goodman
May 10: Late, a cowboy song by Sarah Ruhl
May 11: Sebastian by Alejandro Morales
May 12: The Beauty of the Father by Nilo Cruz All reading are at 7 PM and open to the public. The reservation number is (212) 260-2400.
—By Robert Simonson
