Eve Ensler, currently making her return to New York with the award winning Vagina Monologues, will have the world premiere of her newest piece, Lemonade, staged Oct. 8-Nov. 7 and officially opening Oct. 13 at the Alley Theatre in Houston. David Wheeler, who helmed the Alley's recent Death of a Salesman directs. Lemonade begins when a middle-aged woman named Alice finds Bernard, a strange, amnesic man at her kitchen table. Faced with the question of what she should do, Alice offers him lemonade. Ensler, whose scripts focus on public issues and how they affect women, won an Obie Award for Monologues. Lemonade was a runner-up for the 1999 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, a national women's playwriting award that has honored such writers as Paula Vogel and Wendy Wasserstein in past years.

Ensler, best known for her Vagina Monologues, was named the 1999 Guggenheim Fellow in the Theatrical Arts. Other credits include Necessary Targets, a Bosnian war play staged with Glenn Close and Marisa Tomei at the National Theatre in Sarajevo in Aug. 1998.

Sherri Parker Lee, who recently played the prison secretary in Broadway's Not About Nightingales, stars as Jane, with Lisa Richards as Alice and Stephen Mendillo (Orpheus Descending), making his Alley debut as Bernard.

Richard Hoover designs the set. Hoover won the 1999 Tony Award for Best Set Design for Not About Nightingales.

Tickets ($49-$19) are available by calling the box office at (713) 228 8421. The Alley Theatre is located at and on the web at http://www.alleytheatre.com.

-- By Christine Ehren