Penguin Rep Theatre Begins 2013 Series of Play With Your Food Readings Monday, June 10 With Gino DiIorio’s CRIB

Artistic Director Joe Brancato and Literary Manager Angelo Parra of Penguin Theatre in Stony Point have announced that this year’s popular Monday evening Play With Your Food series of new play readings begins Monday, June 10 with a reading of “Crib” by Gino DiIorio.

“Crib” deals with questions of race, scholarship, and mental illness. Tracy is an African American Professor in the midst of a tenure fight; Rajon is a star basketball player, negotiating the challenges of freshman year and his court prowess. When Rajon is accused of plagiarism and faced with expulsion, Tracy finds herself in the middle of an unwanted battle between academics and athletics.

Playwright Gino DiIorio’s comedy “Centennial Casting,” co-written with Nancy Bleemer, had its world premiere at Penguin Rep in 2006.

His play “The Jag” was the winner of the 2010 Firehouse Theatre’s Great American New Play Award, and a finalist in the 2011 Laurents Hatcher Award Competition and in the Premiere Playwright’s Contest hosted by Kean University in 2010. “Reparation” won the 2011 E. Desmond Lee Playwriting Prize (University of Missouri-St. Louis). The play was also a Yale Drama Series Finalist in 2010. “Dead Ringer,” published by Samuel French, won first place in the BBC’s 2005 International Playwriting Competition and was performed on BBC Radio.

The series also features three other readings, which are scheduled Mondays, July 8, August 19 and September 9. Each reading is preceded by a “picnic” dinner provided by Pasta Cucina Restaurant of Stony Point and followed by a discussion among the playwright, actors and audience. Dinners begin at 6 p.m.; readings begin at 7 p.m. at Penguin Rep’s intimate 108-seat theatre in Stony Point, New York.

Admission including the “picnic” dinner is $21. A subscription to all four readings is $64. Tickets must be ordered in advance at www.penguinrep.org or by calling 845-786-2873.

2013 PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD READING SERIES

Monday, June 10
CRIB
BY GINO DILORIO
Tracy is an African American Professor in the midst of a tenure fight. Rajon is a star basketball player, negotiating the challenges of freshman year and his court prowess. When Rajon is accused of plagiarism and faced with expulsion, Tracy finds herself in the middle of an unwanted battle between academics and athletics.

Monday, July 8
LIFE COULD BE A DREAM
BY JIM SHANKMAN
Princeton, 1972. While the Vietnam War rages away outside, three college students are touched by death in the ivory tower of college life. Unable to handle their individual losses, they instinctively reach out to each other in order to find their way.

Monday, August 19
THE HEMINGS DIARY
BY LUCILE LICHBLAU
When a tell-all diary allegedly written by Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson’s slave/mistress, is discovered at an estate sale in NYC, ancient ghosts stir to life and issues of race, power and the meaning of trust burst into dramatic conflict.

Monday, September 9
CALLING THE TUNE
BY DEBORAH SAVADGE
Greed…Loss…Envy…Aging…Family…Brother and sister clash over custody of their elderly mother and her money. Based on an actual custody dispute between the son and daughter of a wealthy woman, this is a darkly comic drama of sibling rivalry.

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