Sally Oswald and Jordan Harrison are launching Issue #4 of the independent journal PLAY A JOURNAL OF PLAYS. Since 2003, Oswald and Harrison have devoted their off-hours to the life of plays on the page, offering a home in print for innovative, graphically adventurous, and otherwise “impractical” works. The Journal has become a darling of literary managers and theater artists, using homespun distribution that owes more to zine culture than standard book publishing. The fourth, and largest, issue to date was designed by LA-based Jessica Fleischmann of Still-room, and has already sold out its initial shipment to NYC bookstores.

The new issue features a roster of works recently seen and celebrated on New York stages: Ariana Reines’s Telephone (The Foundry Theatre); Les Freres Corbusier’s Dance Dance Revolution (Ohio Theatre); Ann Marie Healy’s What Once We Felt (LCT3); Sibyl Kempson’s Potatoes of August (Dixon Place); Gregory S. Moss’s punkplay (Clubbed Thumb); and Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s Poetics: A Ballet Brut (Under The Radar Festival). The Rude Mechanicals’ Method Gun, forthcoming at the 2010 Humana Festival, is also featured.

PLAY A JOURNAL OF PLAYS will hold a launch party at New Dramatists (424 W.44th Street, NYC) on Monday, February 8 from 7-9pm, featuring performances by The Debate Society and Sibyl Kempson.

CUNY’s Segal Center will devote an evening to the ongoing work of PLAY A JOURNAL OF PLAYS on Monday, March 15. Details forthcoming. Since 2003, Oswald and Harrison have published innovative plays by theater artists such as Sheila Callaghan, Lisa D’Amour, Erik Ehn, David Greenspan, Cynthia Hopkins, Dan Hurlin, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Sarah Ruhl, Alice Tuan, and Mac Wellman. Oswald and Harrison met at Brown University’s graduate playwriting program, where they studied under Paula Vogel.