New York City
The Tony Award-winning Williamstown Theatre Festival (WTF) continues its commitment to developing new works with its In the Works: Fridays @ 3 series. The series is an integral part of the Festival and a perennial favorite, providing selected playwrights with a venue, actors and noted directors to mount readings of their newest plays.
Schedule
Friday, July 15: Lucy and the Conquest by Cusi Cram
Directed by Suzanne Agins
Pill popping Lucy Santiago heads to her family home in Bolivia after being fired from the syndicated hit Beach Detectives. All she wants to do is forget her troubles, but her wildly eccentric family and a mysterious spirit that lives under Simon Bolivar’s campaign bed won’t let her. Lucy is forced to confront her own troubled history as well as the history of a conquered people.
Friday, July 22: Goldfish by Dominic Leggett
Directed by Rosemary Andress
Tom and Alice have invited Karol for dinner. He’s an old friend of theirs – a dissident dramatist from Eastern Europe turned minister and businessman. Tonight he’ll appear on Tom’s talk show to promote his biography – written by Alice. But the cozy arrangement turns sour when he arrives much the worse for wear, with an erotic dancer in tow – and when they disappear into the garden, events spiral out of control.
Friday, July 29: Critical Darling by Barry Levey
Directed by Suzanne Agins
Reaching the cusp of improbable celebrity is not without its anxieties for Frank and Evie, two aging British expatriates seeking literary fame in 1939 New Mexico. Marriage presents one solution; a young Czech émigré proposes another. Starring Roger Rees.
Friday, August 5:Act a Lady by Jordan Harrison
Directed by Tom Bloom
When the men of a small Prohibition-era town don petticoats to perform a period melodrama, nobody but the accordion teacher raises an eyebrow. But as opening night approaches, the play-within-the-play begins to spill off the stage: purloined emeralds, silk snoods, and vengeful ghosts descend upon the Midwestern cattle farmers. By the time the show goes up, one has to wonder: who is on which side of the red velvet curtain?
Friday, August 12:Drawing Monsters by Shawn Nacol
Directed by Michael Barakiva
A modern gothic about cleavage, carnage, and the Queen of the Pulps. From 1933 to 1938, Mrs. Margaret Brundage created the covers for Weird Tales magazine. In 100 pictures of nude women being tortured, raped, and disemboweled, Brundage used her own daughters as models. Inspired by true events, Drawing Monsters unveils a family of women who were drawn to death.
Friday, August 19: Antebellum by Robert O’Hara
Directed by Charles Randolph-Wright
On the evening of the world premiere of Gone with the Wind, a woman shows up on a farm outside Atlanta while a world away, a man shows up in a detention center outside Berlin and a romance unfolds.