SUMMER SHORTS 4 To Feature Premieres By LaBute, Mason & More 7/30-9/2

ThroughLine Artists with J.J. Kandel and John McCormack will present SUMMER SHORTS 4, their fourth annual festival of new American short plays, at 59E59 Theaters (59 East 59th Street). Performances begin Friday July 30th, and continue through Thursday September 2nd.

Featured will be eight World Premieres from some of New York's finest established and emerging playwrights, including Jonathan's Blaze by Christopher Stetson Boal (Order, currently playing on Theatre Row), directed by José Angel Santana; Play With The Penguin by Roger Hedden (Bodies, Rest & Motion), directed by Billy Hopkins; The Graduation Of Grace by Wendy Kesselman (My Sister in This House, new adaptation of The Diary Of Anne Frank), director TBA; Fit by Neil Koenigsberg (producer of such films as Pollack, A Walk on the Moon, and High Art), directed by Merri Milwe; Romance by Neil LaBute (reasons to be pretty, The Shape of Things), directed by Dolores Rice; The Expenses Of Rain by Deb Margolin (Obie Award for Sustained Excellence), directed by Laura Barnett; An Actor Prepares by Timothy Mason (Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical, Babylon Gardens), directed by Maxwell Williams; Happy by Alan Zweibel (700 Sundays, "Saturday Night Live"), directed by Fred Berner ("Law & Order")*.

RoBert Gould will provide scenic design, with costume design by Michael Bevins and lighting design by Greg MacPherson.

Summer Shorts returns for another summer of new American one-acts featuring original plays by the country's top playwrights. Representing some of today's best writing, directing and acting talents, Summer Shorts celebrates theatre, summer and the short form. The festival's two separate series offer a diverse range of voices, styles, and subject matter. Summer Shorts 4 offers eight world premiere one-act plays, in two separate evenings. The two series will run in rotating repertory. The New York Post declared "one-act shorts fit nicely in summer heat!"

59E59 Theaters (Elysabeth Kleinhans, Artistic Director; Peter Tear, Executive Producer) is the Drama Desk Award-winning state-of-the-art theater complex located on 59th Street between Park and Madison Avenues in Manhattan. Owned and operated by the Elysabeth Kleinhans Theatrical Foundation, a not-for profit operating foundation, 59E59 Theaters has set an invigorating policy of bringing new, challenging and entertaining work to a new Off Broadway neighborhood.

Performances will be Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at 7:15, Thursday through Saturday evenings at 8:15pm, with matinees Saturdays at 2:15 and Sundays at 3:15. Tickets are $18 each (59E59 Members $12.60). Tickets can be purchased from the Box Office (Monday 12pm - 6pm, Tuesday - Sunday 12pm - final curtain.), by phone through Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 or online at www.59e59.org. Service fees apply to phone and web purchases. Tickets go on sale July 15th. For more information, please visit www.59e59.org or www.summershortsfestival.com
*All programming subject to change

DEB MARGOLIN is a playwright, performance artist and founding member of Split Britches Theater Company. She is the author of eight full-length solo performance pieces, which she has toured throughout the United States, as well as numerous plays, and is the recipient of a 1999-2000 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance and the Kesselring Playwriting Award for her play Three Seconds in the Key. Her play Bringing the Fisherman Home premiered at the Cleveland Public Theater. Deb has enjoyed commissions from the Jewish Museum of New York, The Public Theater/NYSF, the Actors Theater of Louisville and other theaters, has lectured extensively at universities throughout the country. A book of Deb's performance pieces and plays, Of All the Nerve: Deb Margolin Solo, was published by Cassell/Continuum Press. In 2005 she was awarded the Richard H. Brodhead Prize for Teaching Excellence at Yale. Deb is a proud member of New Dramatists, and was honored to accept the 2008 Helen Merrill Distinguished Playwright Award. Her play Imagining Madoff opens this summer at Stageworks Hudson.