WHAT'S NEXT IN PLAYWRITING

OUR NEXT STAGED READING

"Bleachers”

by Leo Bradley

TAKE YOURSELF OUT TO THE BALLGAME: C.P.I.’s ‘BLEACHERS,’ SEPT 11

Great American prices a little steep for you? For just ten bucks you can take yourself out to Bleachers, Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative’s staged reading of Leo Bradley’s new baseball musical. Bleachers is a romp back into some local and national history of “America’s Pastime,” enhanced by some very sing-able tunes—as if Roger Miller had had season tickets to Crosley Field. Baseball’s uniqueness has given it a special place in the life of our nation. Just about every other major sport—football, basketball, soccer, tennis—is played “horizontally,” from side to side. Baseball alone features circular patterns that keep it interesting despite its more leisurely pace than the aforementioned. That’s why a visit to the ballpark is as much social occasion as a spectators’ event. So join CPI at 7:30 p. m. for a similar celebration on Tuesday, Sept. 11, at the Aronoff Center’s Fifth-Third Bank Theater. Call (513) 621-2787 or go on line at www.CincinnatiArts.org to reserve your Bleachers’ seats. Or you can get ‘em at the door. See ya in the Bleachers!

"Cutting Up”

by Jon Singer

DOCTOR’S BARBERSHOP RAISES QUESTIONS IN C.P.I. STAGED READING

Barbers used to offer some medical services, so maybe it’s just turnabout that playwright Jon Singer, MD (Waitlisted) uses a barber shop in a changing neighborhood as the setting for Cutting Up, his latest Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative staged reading. Dom the barber’s clientele arrives straight out of a Great Gildersleeve-era (Google it, Youngsters) episode. But after some lively sitcom-style dialogue, a dark deed ensues, and it becomes clear that the customers and their way of life have come under siege as diversity strikes their Grant Wood locale. The barbershop patrons’ (and perhaps the playwright’s) POV about their new neighbors should make for lively discussion following the Cutting Up reading which occurs in the Aronoff Center’s Fifth Third Bank Theater at 7:30 p. m., Tuesday, October 9. Tickets—$10--may be had (for less than the price of a mediocre haircut) by calling (513) 621-2787, or going on line at www.CincinnatiArts.org, or for purchase at the door on the evening of performance.