The work of 10 rising New York playwrights will be including in "Plays and Playwrights 2002," the new play anthology from Martin Denton, the creator and editor of the theatre-based website New York Theatre Experience. The volume is the third in an ongoing series, each book generally released in the first weeks of the new year.
"Plays and Playwrights 2002," will feature new works from this past season, each seen and selected by Denton, who also serves as chief critic for his website. The authors are Matt Freeman, Marc Chun, Chiori Miyagawa, J. Scott Reynolds, Ken Urban, Marc Spitz, Curtiss I'Cook, Kate Chell, Peter S. Petralia, and Brian Thorstenson.
Spitz is probably the best known of the ten writers. A contributing editor at Spin Magazine, he is the author of the plays I Wanna Be Adored, Retail Sluts, The Rise and Fall of the Farewell Drugs and ...Worry Baby. Curtiss I'Cook, meanwhile, is a member of The Present Company, which produces the annual New York International Fringe Festival.
One of the plays, Match by Chun, along with two other one-acts, will receive a brief remounting Dec. 13-17 at the Vital Theatre Company (432 W. 42nd Street). Tamara Fisch will direct a cast made up of Ilene Bergelson, Tom Biglin, Lori Jean Hart, Brett Larose and Michael Lombardi.
The "Plays and Playwrights" series was born of critic Denton's wish to save some of the worthier Off-Off-Broadway plays he was reviewing from obscurity and artistic death. Keeping a mental tally of the productions he had especially admired, he later asked the playwrights for permission to publish them in a volume (the writers were paid in free copies of the resulting book). The initial enterprise, titled "Plays and Playwrights of the New Millennium," returned its investment and continues to sell well as a popular alternative collection across the nation. The anthology has resulted in several regional productions for its showcased playwrights, the most recent begin the Amaryllis Theater Company of Philadelphia's staging of C. J. Hopkins' Horse Country.
"Plays and Playwrights 2002" will be available in February.
—By Robert Simonson
