The 26th annual edition of this new-play festival at the Playwrights' Center features five dramatists. Trista Baldwin brings "Forgetting," a play about three women who have lost their brothers. Andy Bragen writes "Mother Earth," a look at global warming from the perspective of a twentysomething. Stephanie Fleischmann's "The Secret Lives of Coats" is a collaboration between the Center and the Guthrie Theater. It's a riff on class and identity among coat-check girls. Shigefumi Fukatsu's "Notari, Notari (Slowly, Rolling)" considers love through the eyes of a dying man and his partying friends. And Allison Moore's "Slasher" sets up a contest between a low-budget star and her mother. Each play will have two readings in a schedule that runs through Sunday.
- Graydon Royce
'Hedwig and the Angry Inch'
This show always inspires questions. Is Hedwig a drag queen or a transsexual? Male or female? Which is better -- the play or the movie? Now we can add a new question to the list: The Jungle is doing a rock musical? It sure is. Joel Sass (director of 2006's acclaimed gender-bender, "I Am My Own Wife") directs this classic about an underappreciated rocker living in the shadow of her ("her"?) ex-lover, Tommy. A heartwrenching story, cult status, gender indeterminacy and glam rock, and it's at one of the most respected theaters in town -- what more could you ask for?
- Danielle Kurtzleben
