Aven'u Boys & Hope is the Thing with Feathers & Summer Winds

"AVEN'U BOYS is not for those with a low tolerance for verbal and visual violence, but it can be enthusiastically recommended to anyone who wants to step into a fever dream of urban America 1993, as searingly realized by a new and gifted 29-year-old playwright named Frank Pugliese.... his gripping style, in which fragmented dialogue and incidents seem to slice through the night like switch blades, casts its own disturbing spell. The playwright is less interested in drawing pat conclusions than in jolting the audience into a world it might ordinarily ignore.... Such is the tragic context of AVEN'U BOYS that these battered women seem the last, best hope for salvation in a city poised for civil war." Frank Rich, The New York Times

Originally produced Off-Broadway at the John Houseman Theater - 3M 3F "The title of Frank Pugliese's difficult but rewarding new play," HOPE" IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS, is taken from an Emily Dickinson poem. The play, too, by the time it is through, is an ode to hope. It is also very much a poem in dramatic form, a poem that baffles at first, and strains the mind. Perhaps, for some, the theater is never supposed to be difficult, but for those whose attention can hold under such challenging conditions, the reward is considerable. For this play is a ninety-minute jigsaw puzzle whose pieces, seemingly unrelated, gradually come together and by the end, the picture is in focus and complete.

...All these people, then, are in midst of making decisions about their lives, present and future. In one way or another, each is in despair. At play's end, they make their decisions, perhaps on the basis that "love is not the opposite of hate--hope is." By that time, having been honored with patience and attention, Mr Pugliese's play becomes most rewarding..." Martin Gottfried, New York Law journal

Originally produced by The Drama Department - 3M 3F

THE SUMMER WINDS was originally produced by Naked Angels. It can be performed with two actors, or as many as eight.