The 3rd Summer Play Festival announces directors

The Summer Play Festival have announced the directors for the 15 shows to play at Theatre Row from the 5 - 30 Jul as part of the third annual event. Tickets for the festival go on sale on the 5 Jun 2006.

Tickets to all SPF shows are $10 each. There is also a SPF membership card now available which costs $25. Members can buy tickets before they go on sale to the public on the 5 Jun, along with other benefits. Ring 212-279-4040 for details.

About the plays for the Third Annual Summer Play Festival:

• The Butcherhouse Chronicles
  Playwrite: Michael Hidalgo
  Director: Thomas Caruso
  Synopsis: A dark play about four high school students looking for their missing history teacher.
• Father Joy
  Playwrite: Sheri Wilner
  Director: Pam MacKinnon
  Synopsis: A fantastical comedy about a girl whose father is actually disappearing before her very eyes.
• The Fearless
  Playwrite: Etan Frankel
  Director: Scott Schwartz
  Synopsis: Follows the decade-long journey of three friends who formed a rock band in college.
• Gardening Leave
  Playwrite: Joanna Pinto
  Director: Michael Goldfried
  Synopsis: A lonely older British man whose life is turned around when a young Iranian woman comes to help with his rooftop garden.
• Hardball
  Playwrite: Victoria Stewart
  Director: Lou Jacob
  Synopsis: A comedy about a rising female Republican political pundit. What happens when news becomes entertainment and politics become a performance?
• Hitting the Wall
  Playwrite: Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich
  Director: Drew Barr
  Synopsis: A dark comedy about a pair of neighbors putting their lives together after the death of one of their children.
• Marge
  Playwrite: Peter Morris
  Director: Alex Timbers Synopsis: A comedy about a man who hires a prostitute to help murder his wife.
• Millicent Scowlworthy
  Playwrite: Rob Handel
  Director: Ken Rus Schmoll
  Synopsis: A story that finds teenagers reenacting a murder that took place in their community.
• Sonia Flew
  Playwrite: Melinda Lopez
  Directed by Justin Waldman
  Synopsis: A Cuban exile haunted by the memories of her past when her son announces his intention to join the Marines.
• Spain
  Playwrite: Jim Knable
  Director: Jeremy Dobrish
  Synopsis: A comedy about a woman, recently left by her husband, who encounters a sixteenth-century conquistador in her twenty-first century living room.
• Splitting Infinity
  Playwrite: Jamie Pachino
  Director: Matt Shakman
  Synopsis: About two old friends, a Rabbi and an astrophysicist who wants to prove that God does not exist.
• The Squirrel
  Playwrite: Alex Moggridge
  Director: Patrick McNulty
  Synopsis: A black comedy that follows a woman and her oversensitive husband, overbearing sister, and a man she just hit with her car.
• Swansong
  Playwrite: Patrick Page
  Director: David Muse
  Synopsis: A comedic fictitious story about real life playwright Ben Jonson putting together the first Folio of William Shakespeare�s work after the Bard�s death.
• Training Wisteria
  Playwrite: Molly Smith Metzler
  Director: Evan Cabnet
  Synopsis: Combines a dysfunctional family with a dirty yard and home improvement on the evening of the son�s graduation party.
• A Wive's Tale
  Playwrite: Christina Ham
  Director:Rosemary Andress
  Synopsis: A futuristic drama about a group of barren women in the future conspiring to create the perfect society.

The final plays were selected by the following theater professionals. They were: Walter Bilderback, David Binder, Jo Bonney, Polly K. Carl, Jeremy Dobrish, David Dower, Gordon Edelstein, Todd London, Eduardo Machado, Lisa McNulty, Richard Nelson, Matthew Byam Shaw, Leigh Silverman, John Weidman.

"Playwrights need productions to become better playwrights.� said Richard Nelson, final selector, playwright, and Yale Department Chair, �The Summer Play Festival is built upon this vision; it has become for young playwrights a significant and necessary part of our theatrical landscape. This is a vital and really important event." Of this year�s selections, West End Producer and selection committee member Matthew Byam Shaw said, �To anyone looking for an original and genuinely entertaining new play this summer, I think the SPF will have it."

Under founder Arielle Tepper, The non-profit organization The Living Room for Artists Inc./Summer Play Festival provides emerging writers, directors, designers and producers an opportunity to work on their material and their craft in a protected environment, guided by established professionals at no cost to them.

The The Summer Play Festival takes place throughout the month of July at Theatre Row on 42nd Street.