New Georges, a downtown theatre group dedicated to female artists, presents the latest play by Kate Moira Ryan, Damage & Desire at HERE, June 4-28.

Set in a rent controlled studio in Chelsea, Damage and Desire depicts poet and fashionable kleptomaniac, Oona Stone. Oona takes over Bloodroot, a feminist literary review run by her sister Madison, who is dying of breast cancer. Urged on by her best gay buddy Jack, she publishes Riding Bareback - one gay man’s diary of unsafe sex. Not only is Madison outraged, but so is every AIDS activist group in the country. Oona finds herself unwitingly in the middle of a heated debate divided along the lines of gender and sexual politics.

New Georges was founded in 1992 by current Artistic Director Susan Bernfield and recently produced Ryan’s Hadley’s Mistake at Soho Rep. Before reaching its New York production, Damage & Desire was workshopped and received staged readings at London’s Royal National Theater, New York Theater Workshop, Manhattan Theater Club, The Women’s Project, Mid-West Playlabs and Brava Women for the Arts in San Francisco.

Other plays by Ryan include: The Autobiography of Aiken Fiction, America's Strangest Home Video, Castro Convertible Girl, Free Ride On The Queen Mary, Harold's Death, Rescuing Marilyn.

New Georges production of Kate Moira Ryan’s Damage & Desire at HERE (145 Avenue of the Americas) runs June 4-28, for reservations and more information call (212) 647-0202. -- By Sean McGrath