Couch: A New Play by Six Authors

by David Warner

If you're familiar with our serial playwriting project on citypaper.net, Couch, you've already met the beleaguered Mrs. Powell and the motley characters who wind up on and around her living room couch: her errant daughter's key-collecting boyfriend (or is he an ex-boyfriend?); their redheaded friend Molly (or is it Polly?); Mrs. P's elderly but swingin' mother-in-law and her Jamaican home healthcare aide; the mysterious Mr. Powell and the even-more-mysterious Venus (or is it Venice?). If you haven't had the pleasure, now's your chance: On Monday night, as a special event in the Fringe Festival, there will be a staged reading of Couch starring seven terrific actors (David Disbrow, Peter Donohue, Cloe Fox, Terry Guerin, Marcia Lawson, Kirsten Quinn and Hazel Weinberg) plus the six local playwrights who gave them life: Alexander E. Dremann, Jeremy Schlosberg, Diane Cribbs, Justin Warner, Vanessa Christman and Michael Hollinger, who devised the project along with City Paper and the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia. Hollinger got the ball rolling with two lines of dialogue, and playwrights competed in subsequent weeks to continue the play from there, scene by scene. Michael then tied up all the loose ends -- which include the key to the Congressional bathroom, a telltale box of dry milk and the rock hit "8 Millimeter Assault Pussy" -- in one final scene to be unveiled for the first time at Monday's reading. Hang around afterwards to talk about how you would have ended it!

Couch: A New Play by Six Authors, Mon. Sept. 9, 8:30 p.m., $5 (proceeds go to the contest winners and the Theatre Alliance), Christ Church, second floor, 20 N. American St. (between Second and Third sts., just north of Market), 215-413-1318.