The East End Plays a festival of George F Walker's work at the Access Theatre

Sightlines Theater Company presents The East End Plays, a festival of six (three fully staged, three readings) award-winning plays by George F. Walker, in repertoire at Access Theatre fro, the 29 Oct - 20 Nov 2005.

Set in what is transparently a single neighborhood,The East End Plays by George F. Walker is a series of related plays that explore the margins of contemporary urban life in the global village.

Three of The East End Plays - Love and Anger, Criminals in Love, and Tough! - will be presented for the first time ever in repertory. The remaining three - Better Living, Escape from Happiness, and Beautiful City - will be presented as readings.

• Criminals in Love
  Explores the lives -and modest fantasies of future happiness- of Gail and Junior, two young people in love. Overwhelmed by the pervasiveness of Junior's extended family of felons, he and Gail are forced to fall back upon a neighborhood philosopher/bum. Together, they make comic, yet poetic, attempts at a strategy to avoid not only the inevitability of Junior's destiny, but also the great shadow of the abyss.
  Director: Eileen Phelan.
  Cast: Franklin Clay Boyd, David Colacci, Lila Donnolo, Faryl Millet, Melanie Rey and John Taylor.
  Dates: 29 Oct - 20 Nov 2005
  
• Love And Anger
  Follows a ragtag group of would-be activists hell-bent on defeating the corruption caused by a media mogul who runs the town. Their unlikely leader is Petie Maxwell, voice of the underdog and former corporate lawyer. Born-again after suffering a stroke, Maxwell becomes a social revolutionary with the will to remake the world - one hopeless lawsuit at a time.
  Director: Lee Gundersheimer
  Cast: Bill Balzac, Ted Hannan, Michael Kuhn, Cecil MacKinon, Jaquita Ta'le and Rae C. Wright.
  Dates: 2 - 20 Nov 2005
  
• Tough!
  Walker's dark comedy looks at a relationship on the edge of success or failure. Tina and Bobby face a tough decision: stay together and face the world or go their separate ways, hoping one day they'll come back together. Sometimes love has to be fierce.
  Director: Chris Mirto
  Cast: Mary Cavett, Nick Scoullar and Nell Teare.
  Dates: 12 - 20 Nov 2005
  

• Beautiful City (Sun 6 Nov 2pm) - a journey through a city that has been given over to the interests and values of criminal developers, directed by Shelly Wyant.
• Better Living (Sun 13 Nov 1:00pm) - an "Chekhovian vision" of a family paralyzed by a tyrannical father and husband, directed by Donna Linderman.
• Escape From Happiness (Sun 20 Nov 1pm) - we enter the world of a uniquely dysfunctional, self-consciously insular, working-class family whose response to the predicaments that occur in life is defensive and extreme, directed by Gaye-Taylor Upchurch.