Black Wave Press is pleased to announce the release of the 2009 New York Theater Review, its fourth annual edition featuring plays, essays and interviews assembled by editor Brook Stowe. The Review showcases writers, performers, trends and movements of the past year in the downtown, or off-off-Broadway, theater scene, a vibrant force often marginalized or completely ignored by the mainstream media. The Review is a vital and unique resource offering insight and exposure to small theater in New York, a vital segment of theatrical endeavor too often viewed as a jumping-off point for artists, rather than a sustained, living theater movement that has existed for more than half a century. In the Review’s 350 pages, editor Stowe draws on his experiences as a playwright, former theater editor of the Brooklyn Rail and the seminal theater website, theater2k, to offer a taste of the vital, exciting and too-often underrepresented world of alternative NYC theater.

In the 2009 edition’s first essay, Justin Tracy focuses on the legacy of playwright/critic Arthur Sainer, a strong influence in early NYC downtown theater, whose life and work continue to inspire the alternative theater world today. Next, theater director and activist Cynthia Croot explores the connections between New York and Middle Eastern theater, and the ways in which these personal connections open new dialogue. And finally, Lane Pianta writes on the work of Ben Spatz and Urban Research Theater, which has brought the physical styles of Grotowski and his followers to New York audiences.

Two full-length plays were selected for the 2009 Review, Ellen McLaughlin’s Kissing the Floor, a disturbing Depression-era riff on Sophocles’ Antigone that explores the lengths and limits of family blood ties and David Ian Lee’s Sleeper, a continent-hopping, time-shifting dissection of America’s post-9/11 legacy. In addition, twelve ten-minute plays selected from the more than two hundred in Blue Box Productions’ “Sticky” series are featured. The plays, about everything from wedding receptions to serial killers to Neil LaBute, all take place in a bar, and are performed as such at Sticky events. The writers, representing a cross-section of New York Playwrights are, Michael Domitrovich, Libby Emmons, Arden Kass, David Marcus, Rehana Mirza, Dennis Moritz, Michael Niederman, Katherine Ryan, Brad Saville, Adam Szymkowicz, Jesse Wann, & Gary Winter. All told, the fourteen plays featured in the 2009 Review offer a strong sampling of the state of alternative theater in contemporary New York City.