Ayckbourn, Hands, et. al to Participate in Brits Off Broadway Festival

Award-winning playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Tony nominee Terry Hands, and internationally acclaimed author Mark Jenkins will participate in this year’s edition of Brits Off Broadway, the annual festival at 59E59 Theaters that presents the U.K.’s most innovative and provocative theater in New York City. Featuring a lineup of seven productions, the festival will run May 3-July 1.

Brits Off Broadway will kick off with The Receipt (May 3-27), written and performed by Will Adamsdale and Chris Branch. All about a man who flips out and searches the city for the owner of a receipt, the play received a Fringe First Award and a Total Theatre Award for Innovation at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Former RSC artistic director Hands helms Memory (May 5-27), a play by Jonathan Lichtenstein that links the events of the Holocaust with the modern-day Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Next up, Di Trevis directs Benjamin Davis’ debut play, Silverland (May 15-June 3), set in the near future when global warming has left Britain in near ruin. Jenkins’ Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles (May 29-June 10) is directed by Josh Richards and stars Christian McKay. In this piece, the author of Playing Burton turns his attention to Hollywood director Orson Welles.

Ayckbourn, whose many plays include Communicating Doors, The Norman Conquests, and the previous Brits Off Broadway hit Private Fears in Public Places, returns to the festival with the New York premiere of Intimate Exchanges (May 31-July 1). In this ambitious work, one character’s dilemma — to smoke or not to smoke — kicks off eight separate plays with 16 different endings.

Playwright/director Nina Raine’s Rabbit (June 5-July 1) is an alcohol-fueled battle between the sexes. The festival’s final production will be Radio (June 12-July 1), written by Al Smith and directed by James Yeatman, about a farmer-turned-flag maker’s son who shoots for the moon.

For more information, visit www.britsoffbroadway.com.