The fest of four readings and two workshops includes a workshop of Sabina, a new musical about Freud, Jung and the woman who influenced them both. Music is by Louise Beach, lyrics are by Darrah Cloud and book is by Willy Holtzman. The "haunting" musical work tells of the troubled, brilliant Sabina Spielrein, and her relationship with Freud and Jung. She rises from mental patient to one of Europe's leading psychoanalysts.

Sabina's composer, Beach, is the recipient of a 2002 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Parts of the new work have been heard in recent years in the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop. The presentations are Sept. 13 and 21, with revisions expected by the second week.

The second and third weeks of the festival offer workshops, with audience feedback and increased rehearsal time involved, while the first two weeks are devoted to simpler readings.

In addition to Sabina, the other work getting a two-weekend workshop presentation is Project X, by Carlos Murillo, Sept. 14 and 20. Murillo, a Chicago playwright, agreed to accept this challenge: Create a new company-generated piece in two weeks. At the end of each week, the writer and company "will share their progress with us," according to the announcement.

O Lovely Glowworm, or Scenes of Great Beauty, a new play by Glen Berger, author of Off-Broadway's Underneath the Lintel, is presented in a reading Sept. 7. The work is billed as "an epic Monty Python-esque sendup of the British Empire circa 1910-1924...full of silliness and wild storytelling." Berger's characters include a talking stuffed goat, a Siren who lures men to their deaths, a British explorer and "an unsuccessful inventor searching for a way to automatically flush the privy." The musical Main-Travelled Roads, with book and lyrics by Dave Hudson and music by James Kaplan, based on the stories of Wisconsin-born novelist Hamlin Garland, gets a reading Sept. 6. Kaplan is one of the creators of the regional hit, Guys on Ice. The new show is "a musical homage to farmers, farm girls and the dreamers who made Midwest what it is today."

Also being heard in a reading is Allison Moore's Eighteen, Sept. 6, billed as a "funny and disturbing family mystery" about a niece who moves in with her aunt and uncle. The aunt discovers the niece "eating ice chips and succumbing to the lure of magical chocolate brownies."

Kirsten Greenidge's San-culottes in the Promised Land gets a reading Sept. 7. It's billed as "a fantasy infused satire about the road to success." In it, "a lawyer about to make partner keeps bumping her head; her architect husband can't close a deal or keep his hands off the help; their young daughter is desperate for attention and the nanny has a secret."

Commissioned by South Coast Repertory, Greenidge "maps the false promise of advanced education and the reality of the glass ceiling in America, especially within this upper middle-class African-American family."

The festival's closing keynote address is by Quills playwright Doug Wright, whose I Am My Own Wife has become one of the most talked-about plays in New York this summer.

For more information about Madison Repertory Theatre, call (608) 256-0029 ext. 23 or visit www.madisonrep.org.

*

Madison Rep presents the world premiere of Eurydice, by Sarah Ruhl, Aug. 29-Sept. 21. The show is concurrent with The Fall Festival of the Future.