THE CUTTING EDGE: AN OFF-BROADWAY PLAY READING SERIES

season 2026
Now performing in the new anderson studio at Town Hall Theater

 
simple sage
 by kate Youngdahl-Stauss
directed by Rebecca Strum
SUNDAY, february 15, 4 PM 
based on the curious true story of a house in granville, Vermont built in the 18th century that still stands today. In the 19th century the house was occupied by the Lamb sisters, two of whom married John deere, who invented the john deere plow.  Then, in the 1930's, legend has it that several lesbian farmers came to granville and rescued the house and land after the collapse of the lumber industry. tales of Vermont women during these two eras facing the parallel themes of social restraint and the degradation of the natural landscape are woven together in the play revealing a potential message for our own time.
 
darwin in malibu
by crispin whitell
Directed by cheryl faraone
SUNDAY JUNE 28, 4PM  
143 years after he published the origin of the species, (and 120 years after his death), charles darwin sits on the deck of a malibu beach house. up pops the bishop of oxford, samuel wilberforce, and darwin's friend and champion thomas huxley, both also long dead and buried. experience of life and death, love and loss, mean that previouysly held certainties are now uncertainties. once you know something - whether it is about dna or what your boyfriend did last night - nothing is ever the same again. and while science may be able to explain how we got here, it cannot explain why we are here. It cannot explain our hearts. crispin whittell's comic drama is fiercely intelligent and also delicate as it probes the mysteries of what makes us human and why.
 
 mary postgate
 by jay parini
directed by richard romagnoli
SUNDAY september 27, 4PM
jay parini has uniquely dramatized rudyard kipling's short story, mary postgate, set in england before and during world war i. parini's play introduces mary, a spinster maid hired to tend to the head of the household, and her orphaned young nephew, towards whom mary becomes quasi-maternal. the tale evolves into a parable about how a repressed naive soul infected by prejudice, grows, without realizing it, into a monstrosity.