2006 Summer Play Festival Announces Selections

Fifteen plays have been selected for the Third Annual Summer Play Festival, which will take place at Theatre Row, July 5-30. The works to be showcased are The Butcherhouse Chronicles by Michael Hidalgo, about four high school students looking for their missing history teacher, Father Joy by Sheri Wilner, a fantastical comedy about a girl whose father is actually disappearing before her very eyes; The Fearless by Etan Frankel, which follows the decade-long journey of three friends who formed a rock band in college, Gardening Leave by Joanna Pinto, about a lonely older British man whose life is turned around when a pretty young Iranian woman comes to help with his rooftop garden, Hardball, a comedy by Victoria Stewart about a rising female Republican political pundit; and Hitting the Wall, a dark comedy by Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich about a pair of neighbors putting their lives together after the death of one of their children.

Also on tap are Peter Morris’ Marge; about a man who hires a prostitute to help murder his wife, Rob Handel’s Millicent Scowlworthy, which focuses on a group of teenagers reenacting a murder that took place in their community, Melinda Lopez’s Sonia Flew, which follows a Cuban exile haunted by the memories of her past when her son announces his intention to join the Marines, Jim Knable’s Spain, a comedy about a woman, recently separated from her husband, who encounters a sixteenth-century conquistador in her twenty-first century living room, and Jamie Pachino’s Splitting Infinity about a Rabbi and an astrophysicist who wants to prove that God does not exist.

The SPF’s other selections include Alex Moggridge’s The Squirrel, a comedy that follows a woman and her oversensitive husband, overbearing sister, and a man she just hit with her car, Patrick Page’s Swansong, a fictitious story about playwright Ben Johnson putting together the first Folio of William Shakespeare’s work after the Bard’s death, Molly Smith Metzler’s Training Wisteria, which combines a dysfunctional family with a dirty yard and home improvement on the evening of the son’s graduation party, and Chirstina Ham’s A Wive’s Tale, a futuristic drama about a group of barren women in the future conspiring to create the perfect society.

Tickets to the each show are $10. For more information, visit www.spfnyc.com