Westport Country Playhouse Continues New Works Initiative

1/11/2017 3:02pm


Westport Country Playhouse (Mark Lamos, Artistic Dir) will continue its commitment to developing new plays and musicals with its New Works Initiative set for January and February. This year, the New Works Initiative will make possible the development of four new plays through workshops involving playwrights and other artists, culminating in readings before an invited audience in the Playhouse’s Lucille Lortel White Barn, Sheffer Studio. The 2017 New Works Initiative schedule includes a reading of THE VENDLER TELEVISION PLAYHOUSE by Susan Rice, a farcical comedy about a 1950s live television studio and its wacky cast of characters, on Thursday, January 19. The reading will star Joanna Gleason, and will be directed by Robert CaryMatthew Greene’s THOUSAND PINES, the heart-stopping tale of a small town tragedy that weaves some unsuspecting families together, will be workshopped on Wednesday and Thursday, Jan 25 and 26. The play will be directed by Austin Pendleton. THE BIGGEST VALLEY by A. Zell Williams will be workshopped on Fri Jan 27.  The play is set in Fresno, California, in the late ‘90s, where a single mother struggles to help her children through teen pregnancy, racial tensions, and a life she never dreamed for them. THE FORGOTTEN WOMAN a gleeful comedy about an operatic superstar and her tumultuous off-stage life, is written by Jonathan Tolins and will have a reading on Mon Feb 6. The New Works Initiative is funded by the Playhouse’s New Works Circle.  Founding members are Howard J. Aibel, Stephen Corman, Ania Czekaj-Farber, Sandra & Neil DeFeo, Kate & Bob Devlin, Michele & Marc Flaster, Susan Jacobson & David Moskovitz, Judy & Scott Phares, Barbara & John Samuelson, Barbara & John Streicker, and Johnna G Torsone & John McKeon. For more information, please visit www.westportplayhouse.org. Press contact: Pat Blaufuss/Westport Country Playhouse (203/227-5137 x 134)...