Potomac Theatre Project is an Off-Broadway powerhouse of veteran and emerging talent creating socially and politically acute theatre for the 21st century. In its 3 1/2 decades, the voices of PTP’s writers have addressed the necessity and difficulty of art, homelessness, censorship, pornography, AIDS, totalitarianism, apartheid and gender wars—always in passionate, deeply human terms. Playwrights whose work is often seen on the company’s stages include Howard Barker, Caryl Churchill, Harold Pinter and Neal Bell; recent seasons included Vaclav Havel & Bertolt Brecht.
LUNCH
by Steven Berkoff
*New York City Premiere*
PTP/NYC’s “Lunch” rich, searing and absorbing
Lunch takes off from the start in fascinating and dense musings…….makes the most of every moment of its approximately 40 minute runtime through Berkoff’s enthralling dialogue….Passionate, blunt, vivid, and occasionally shocking, the play also delves into loneliness in a most unexpected way. – The Sleepless Critic
A woman and man, (ostensibly) strangers, engage in a provocative encounter that forces them to recognize their loneliness. Sexy, rude and funny.
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HOT FUDGE & HERE WE GO
by Caryl Churchill
“Suffice it to say that the characters in this brief, explosive work are on the gravy train…. rich in bracing theatrical bile.” Frank Rich NYTimes
Hot Fudge is an explosive short play about greed and self-invention – a bleak, black comedy.
“But what Churchill has written is a striking memento mori for an age without faith; and although her play is brief, that in itself evokes the idea that we are here for a short time and then are suddenly gone.” Michael Billington The Guardian
Here We Go is written in three brief scenes. The play drifts from conversations among mourners at a post-funeral party to the dying process of (possibly) the man mourned and finally a wordless sequence with a man and his caregiver.
“Here We Go,” Churchill’s new play premiering at the National Theatre in London, is a sculpture of sorts: The more you stare at it, the more it reveals. What seems a straightforward meditation on death, a cry to carpe that diem, turns into a sharp reprimand to its audience: a clarion call — check your privilege. – Variety
Potomac Theatre Project presents two evenings in repertory:
SEX, GRIFT AND DEATH
An evening featuring plays by Steven Berkoff (LUNCH) and Caryl Churchill (HOT FUDGE & HERE WE GO)
directed by Richard Romagnoli & Cheryl Faraone
REVERSE TRANSCRIPTION
An evening featuring plays by Robert Chesley (DOG PLAYS) and Jonathan Adler & Jim Petosa (A VARIANT STRAIN)
directed by Jim Petosa
DOG PLAYS
by Robert Chesley
A VARIANT STRAIN
by Jonathan Adler and Jim Petosa
A pairing of two plays juxtaposes stories of gay men across two pandemics, placing a rarely-performed work from the AIDS era in the United States (DOG PLAYS) alongside a new story for the COVID era (A VARIANT STRAIN). Based on interviews about gay men’s lived experiences of AIDS and COVID, the dialogue between these stories reveals new possibilities for understanding and healing across generations.
“The Potomac Theatre Project is doing “The Dog Plays,” the strongest and most moving theatrical treatment of AIDS I’ve ever seen. Robert Chesley, the author, died of AIDS last year (1990), and his three short plays — playlets, really — are meditations on death: its horrors, ironies, unfathomability, inevitability.” – Lloyd Rose, The Washington Post
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ATLANTIC THEATER COMPANY STAGE 2
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