Next play reading:

Tonight at 8.30 -  by Noel Coward

A selection of short plays by Noel Coward which range from light comedy, to drama, to tragedy so there should be something for everyone.

Three of these plays are proposed for a production in Amsterdam in May 2012 and one of them for a showing at FEATS (the Festival of European Anglophone Theatrical Societies) in Antwerp 25 to 28 May 2012

Date of play reading November 24

Venue: Nina Cohen's

For new attendees: write to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or through the website www.inplayers.org

Moderator and director Alex McKenzie

WE WERE DANCING

Two stylish people, Karl and Louise (a married woman), fall in love at a country club dance on a south Pacific island. They spend the night planning their future and how they can be together.

WAYS AND MEANS

In a bedroom in Mrs. Lloyd Ransome's fabulous villa on the Cote d'Azur are heiress Stella Cartwright and her husband, a gambler. They are plagued by debts and their prolonged stay at the villa is becoming embarrassing as everything seems to always go wrong for them. Their honour is saved just in time when a disgraced chauffeur tries to rob them.

THE ASTONISHED HEART

Christian Faber, a leading psychiatrist, falls passionately in love with Leonora Vail, an old friend of his wife. Leonora has wilfully led him on but is unprepared for the disastrous effect on him. Faber, more and more desperate, watches his own mind lose control of itself, with tragic consequences.

STILL LIFE

The play depicts the love affair of Alec and Laura across a twelve-month period. The sadness of Alec and Laura's serious and secretive affair is contrasted throughout the play with the boisterous, uncomplicated relationship of Myrtle and Albert.

As it is in someone's home, please bring your own drinks.
Free for newcomers and paid members, € 3 for others

Recent play readings:

Almost an Evening - by Ethan Coen

Moderator: Joel Lipton

In Almost an Evening, three short plays unsuccessfully tackle important questions.

In Waiting, someone waits somewhere for quite some time.

In Four Benches, a voyage to selfdiscovery takes a British intelligence agent to steam baths in New York and Texas, and to
park benches in the U.S. and U.K.

In Debate, cosmic question are taken up. Not much is learned.
--Dramatists Play Service

With their macabre humor and dark sense of iron, the Coen Brothers’ films offer a distinctively skewed view of Americana, appropriating genres from screwball to noir to convey a bizarre world in which heinous things happen. A similarly twisted perspective -- and a reference frame ranging from Beckett to Mamet -- is applied in Ethan Coen’s first solo work for the theater,

Almost an Evening, three short plays that swap planet U.S.A. for a more abstract universe in which philosophical, existential and metaphysical questions bounce around.
--Variety

Good stuff!
--Joel Lipton

"Hell is a state of mind"

http://www.nola.com/arts/index.ssf/2011/01/hell_is_a_state_of_ethan_coens.html 

 3 November 2011 at 20.00 hrs 

For venue please contact us through website or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Beverages and snacks for sharing will be appreciated greatly.

Alcestis Revisted - by Svarupa

Alcestis Revisted is a Greek drama . A variation on a Euripides play written in the 5^th century BC.  The plot tells of  a young king, Admetus, who through no fault of his own is destined to die an unexpected and early death.

The young god Apollo is being punished by his Father Zeus by being put to work as a human farmhand on the King’s estate. Because he has been treated kindly by the King, Apollo decides to use his influence with the Sisters Three, the Fates to save the King’s life. They agree that Admetus may live if some else volunteers to take his place.

This creates what one might call a sticky situation.  Much to Admetus’ surprise, it seems no one is willing to die for him.  Alcestis, his beloved wife sacrifices herself and asks only that he not marry again and bring a stepmother in to rule over their children.

Well, she dies (on stage)  The King is distraught and the members of his household speak disparagingly of him.  Enter his old war buddy, Hercules and …..bla de bla the plot twists and turns and against all odds there is a happy ending to this Greek tragedy.  In my version a double happy ending!

There are 14 characters. 8 men and 6 woman.  Some parts are smaller than others but all are good and important roles.  Strong, emotional and all out acting is required in some of the scenes so that the audience will tear up and……not giggle!

And just as a side note, did you know the Greek word tragedy translates as meaning Goat Song. Bet you didn’t know that one. Anyway I didn’t.

Wanderlust -

by Nick Payne 

Trainspotting (the movie script) 

-by John Hodge.
Based on the Novel by Irvine Welsh.

by Patrick Hamilton

Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are dead

by Tom Stoppard

The Madness of George III

by Alan Bennett

the true story of George III's deteriorating mental health, and his equally declining relationship with his son, the Prince of Wales, particularly focusing on the period around the Regency Crisis of 1788. Modern medicine has suggested that the King's symptoms were the result of acute intermittent porphyria.

The Oldest Profession

by Paula Vogel

As Ronald Reagan enters the White House, five aging practitioners of the oldest profession are faced with a diminishing clientele, increased competition for their niche market, and aching joints. With wit, compassion and humor, they struggle to find and learn new tricks as they fight to stay in the Life.

Proof

by David Auburn

On the eve of her twenty-fifth birthday, Catherine, a troubled young woman, has spent years caring for her brilliant but unstable father, a famous mathematician. Now, following his death, she must deal with her own volatile emotions; the arrival of her estranged sister, Clair; and the attentions of Hal, a former student of her father’s who hopes to find valuable work in the 103 notebooks that her father left behind. Over the long weekend that follows, a burgeoning romance and the discovery of a mysterious notebook draw Catherine into the most difficult problem of all: How much of her father’s madness -- or genius -- will she inherit?

 Damascus

 by David Greig

Damascus, written by David Grieg was first presented at the Edinburgh Festival in 2007 winning the Scotsman Fringe First Award along the way. This play has been described as a fascinating tragicomedy about Arab and western misunderstandings, and the gap between what we think we know about the Middle East and the everyday realities of life there.

Melancholy Play
a contemporary farce
by Sarah Ruhl

“Melancholy Play mixes the absurdity of Pirandello and Fellini and the edgy prettiness of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Off-beat, lyrical and just a little bit nutty, it is a real charmer.”  
-- Chicago Sun-Times

“Reading a Sarah Ruhl play is a little akin to falling in love. You see the world with fresh perceptions: the man or woman sitting across from you on the bus seems mysterious and magnetic. Weeping feels delicious and laughing feels sexier than hell. And just for the brief few hours, you imagine you can sing and dance. And then you come to the end of the play -- all good things do come to an end -- and you sigh, and wait for your next fling with another of her plays.”
-- Paula Vogel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of _How I Learned to Drive

Previous play readings

MORT  - by Terry Pratchett

• performed in December 2010

The Dresser - by Ronald Harwood

Stockholm  - by Bryony Lavery

The Red Devils - by Debbie Horfield

At the Sign of "The Crippled Harlequin" - by Norman Robbins

A Midsummer Night's Dream - by William Shakespeare

Arsenic and Old Lace - by Joseph Kesselring

Going Postal - by Terry Pratchett

Liquid Love - by Teresa Merilainen.

• This play was performed 7-9 May 2009 at the CREA theater
  

Loot – by Joe Orton
Scenes from an Italian Restaurant – by Michael Stirling

The Real Inspector Hound – by Tom Stoppard

• This absurd parody of the mystery play made famous by Dame Agatha Christie was performed 26 Feb - 1 March 2009 at the CREA Theatre.

• A modern day Commedia dell’ Arte play
• Was our November 2009 production and entry in the FEATS 2010 festival in Bad Homburg, Germany

• The Goon Show was a comic British radio with surreal storylines, absurd logic, puns, and catchphrases which ran on the BBC from 1951 until 1960. It changed the face of British comedy, inspiring new generations of comics from the Monty Python crew through Eddy Izzard
• The decision to do a reading of a selection of scripts from The Goon Show proved an inspiring one. We clearly have Goon Show fans in our numbers as some came fully prepared with odd instru­ments for making the kind of sound effects associate with the original show, creating authenticity as well as a real racket. A grand time was had by all.

• offers a surrealistic impression of what Europe might have to look forward to in the 21^st Century by extrapolating from the continent’s (mostly) recent past, and choosing what certainly not the happiest chapters of that past are.
• In the translation of Johan Statius Muller

• A Who-Done-it with an undercurrent of emerging changes from the sixties with regards to emotions and homosexuality. In that sense it is an interesting revisit to the past.

• A series of short-short plays
• Performed in April 2008
• see review

• This play has since been performed in October 2008
• see review

• a political drama and a powerful plea for peace. Placed in a setting clearly inspired by occupied Palestine, it is an all too timely take about the roots of spreading violence, and a fine example of how theater can tackle contemporary problems.