Short Plays From Edinburgh Fringe to Run Off Broadway

Theater Uncut, a scrappy, all-volunteer collective that drew standing room crowds at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe last summer, will present a series of short plays Off Broadway at the Clurman Theater Jan. 29-Feb. 3, the company has announced.

Run by co-artistic directors Emma Callander and Hannah Price, Theater Uncut was launched in March 2011, when a number of British writers were asked to write short plays in response to the brutal cuts in public spending announced by the coalition government in 2010. The resulting scripts were made available for anyone in the world to download and present for free for one week, and about 75 groups took part in that inaugural effort.

In 2012, the company asked a global group of writers, both emerging and established (Neil LaBute was a participant), to respond to the current political climate in their home countries. About a dozen of the resulting scripts were presented at the Traverse Theater in Edinburgh last summer, and th e full collection of 2012 plays was then offered for free download once again. According to Ms. Callander, more than 200 people in 17 countries participated in the recent “international week of action,” held Nov. 12-18.

It is a selection of these latest works that Theater Uncut will present in New York, including Mr. LaBute's “In the Beginning,” about the Occupy movement.

The Theater Uncut series is being offered at the tail end of a previously announced run of “Midsummer [A Play with Songs],” a romantic comedy written and directed by the Scottish playwright David Greig, with songs by Gordon McIntyre. “Midsummer” will run at the Clurman Theater Jan. 9-26. Both shows are being produced by the Carol Tambor Theatrical Foundation. “Midsummer,” loosely inspired by Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream” (with the city of Edinburgh replacing the Athenian forest as an enchanted locale) was presented at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2009, whe n it was well-received by critics. The original two-person cast, of Cora Bissett and Matthew Pidgeon will appear in the New York production.