It will be two new plays, one by an unknown playwright and one by an established English writer, for the 2001-02 season at Soho Rep, the Off Broadway company known for challenging and textually and structurally avant garde work by the likes of Mac Wellman and Richard Maxwell.

The fall offering will by [sic] by newcomer Melissa James Gibson, beginning Nov. 11 for an open-ended run. Soho Rep artistic director Daniel Aukin will stage the piece. The play concerns Babette, Theo and Frank, who live in neighboring apartments. Once wunderkinds who looked forward to great careers as a novelist, musician and auctioneer, respectively, they are now not so young and not so promising. The show is described as being about "friendships built on quicksand."

[sic] was developed in Soho Rep's 2000-01 playwrights-directors lab and given a reading this past spring. The company then took the extraordinary step of immediately giving it a production slot. Aukin directed the Soho Rep hit The Year of the Baby by Quincy Long and Cat's Paw by Wellman.

"[sic]" is an editorial term meaning, roughly, "intentionally so written." It is typically placed after a misspelled or archaically spelled word to indicate that the spelling is that of the original writer or speaker, not the publication or editor which has reprinted the quote.

Soho Rep's spring show, meanwhile, is Attempts on Her Life, the latest by British scribe Martin Crimp. Is she a terrorist? Is she a porn star? A new car model? The show, which bowed at the Royal Court in London, tries to answer these questions. New York sightings of Crimp's work include The Treatment at the Public Theater and a new adaptation of The Misanthrope at CSC. Attempts will run in April 2002, with specific dates and a director to be announced.

Last spring, Soho Rep won an Obie Award grant of $1,000.

—By Robert Simonson