Arts & Entertainment

Albee's workshop presents free plays

By Lindsey Bowers
The Daily Cougar

Students from the annual Edward Albee New Playwrights Workshop will display their works beginning this weekend at Stages Repertory Theatre.

Edward Albee, Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist and UH theater professor, has helped a group of young playwrights bring their visions to life through his semester-long workshop.

Albee is the author of many heralded works, including The Zoo Story (Vernon Rice Award), Whois Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Tony Award), Three Tall Women (Pulitzer Prize), A Delicate Balance (Pulitzer Prize), Seascape (Pulitzer Prize) and The Goat (Tony Award).

Since 1998, Albee has taught playwriting and production courses each spring at the UH School of Theatre. Each Fall semester, he narrows down the applicants to a choice group of plays from those submitted to him for development in workshop format.

Now, after the workshop, the six chosen plays are ready for exhibition.

Godis Own Cartoon Anvil, by Michael S. Crawford, is about a man who deprivation and disloyalty have forced inside himself. Crawford is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and is a returning writer in the Albee workshop.

Rapture Among the Oysters, by Thomas LeVrier, is a darkly comedic look at a 30 year old high school romance set in East Texas. LeVrier is a reporter for the Houston Chronicle and has had his plays nationally produced.

Donna Perkinsi Touching Leaves is about going below the surface of life. Perkins has been an art teacher for 20 years, and will retire at the end of the school year.

Engagements & Ornaments is a comedic take on 19th-century Southern familyis plotting and betrayals. Author Peter Wittenberg has previously had two short plays produced in the Houston area.

Elizabeth Ann Earleis Blueness/Grayness deals with how family and friends react to its trauma and its victims. Earle has been published in anthologies complied by Women in the Visual and Literary Arts, on the board of which she has served for four years.

We Need to Talk by Crystal Jackson features antagonistic couples arguing over dinner. Jackson learned about human interaction by spending a lot of time in bars.

Performances are scheduled for April 18-20 and 25-27 at Stages Repertory Theatre, 3201 Allen Parkway. Admission is free. Call the School of Theatre box office at 713-743-2929 for more information.

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