Little Theatre, a monthly performance event at Tonic, the music venue on the Lower East Side, presents new work by multiple Obie Award-winning playwright, director and screenwriter Len Jenkin, solo theater artist Deke Weaver and playwright/director Kate Ryan on Monday, March 29th.

In a world of increasingly competitive and formulaic Big Theater, Little Theater provides a venue for experimentation, and promises gritty prop-less glamour flanked by red velvet curtains, brief yet soaring bits of newly born theater, and a fully stocked bar (Brooklyn Rail).

Come check it out:

The Dream Express (Out Takes) by Len Jenkin
with Deirdre O’Connell and Steve Mellor
with music by John Kilgore

The Elf
by Deke Weaver

Sheila and Beth (an excerpt from Sheila)
by Kate Ryan
with Rachel Hoeffel and Judson Kniffen

Len Jenkin is a playwright, screenwriter and director. His plays include Dark Ride, Pilgrims of the Night, My Uncle Sam, Careless Love, Limbo Tales and Like I Say. His many awards and honors include three Obie Awards for Directing and Playwriting, an Emmy Award nomination, four National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is currently a professor in the dramatic writing program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Deke Weaver is a three-time recipient of NEA regional grants in film/video making, and has been a resident at Yaddo, Ucross and MacDowell arts colonies. His video work has been shown in festivals and on public television stations in Russia, Brazil, Australia, Europe and the United States. His solo theater work has been presented in Wales and throughout the U.S. The novel-version of “The Crimes and Confessions of Kip Knutzen: A Hockey Way of Knowledge” was published by Wide Press Books in ’98. In New York his work has been presented at P.S. 122, HERE, Dixon Place, Surf Reality, Tonic, The NY Video Festival, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and other venues.

Kate Ryan is a writer, director and performer whose play Design Your Kitchen (co-directed by the author and Jim Simpson) will receive its world premiere at The Flea this April. She has performed in works by people including Young Jean Lee and Ken Nintzel, and is a member of 13P, a new playwrights’ collective. She co-curates Little Theatre with playwright Jeffrey M. Jones.

Monday, March 29th, 2004
8 pm, $8
Tonic, 107 Norfolk Street b/w Delancey and Rivington (F to Delancey, J/M/Z to Essex).
First come first served; no reservations accepted.

For more information about this event and to find out more about its submission policies, email nosymbols@msn.com.