For the vast generation of actors in their teens and twenties, as well as for teachers, directors, and producers, Under Thirty is an unparalleled source of diverse and challenging roles, created by some of today’s finest writers. The twenty plays presented here in full or in part include insightful looks at the pressure-cooker caste system of American high schools as well as heartbreaking, edgy portrayals of twentysomethings adrift in the city. There are snappy romantic duets, large-cast ensembles, and everything in between, populated by richly dimensional, mold-breaking characters: misfit cheerleaders, nurturing drifters, rich petty thieves—even a rogue SAT tutor. The contributing playwrights span the range of contemporary talent, including award-winning dramatists such as Sam Shepard, Donald Margulies, Warren Leight, and Kenneth Lonergan, hilarious humorists such as David Ives and Douglas Carter Beane, and an impressive array of cutting-edge newer voices.
Eric Lane and Nina Shengold have been editing contemporary theater anthologies for more than twenty years. Eric Lane's award-winning plays have been published and performed in the United States, Canada, Europe, and China. Plays include Ride, Times of War, Heart of the City, Dancing on Checkers' Grave, and Filming O'Keeffe. Floating, a PlayPenn finalist, was workshopped at Raven Theatre. Eric's short plays are published in Best American Short Plays, Poems and Plays, and the Foreign Language Press (Beijing). He wrote and produced the short films First Breath and Cater-Waiter, which he also directed; both films screened in more than forty cities worldwide. For TV's Ryan's Hope he received a Writers Guild Award. Honors include the Berrilla Kerr Playwriting Award, the La MaMa Playwright Award, and fellowships at Yaddo, VCCA, and St. James Cavalier in Malta. Eric is an honors graduate of Brown University, and artistic director of Orange Thoughts, a not-for-profit theater and film company in New York City.
Nina Shengold's plays include Finger Foods, War at Home, Homesteaders, and Romeo/Juliet, and have been produced around the world. Her one-act No Shoulder was filmed by director Suzi Yoonessi, with Melissa Leo and Samantha Sloyan. Nina won a Writers Guild Award for her teleplay Labor of Love, starring Marcia Gay Harden; other teleplays include Blind Spot, with Joanne Woodward and Laura Linney, and Unwed Father. Her books include the novel Clearcut; River of Words: Portraits of Hudson Valley Writers (with photographer Jennifer May), and a growing posse of pseudonymous books for young readers. A graduate of Wesleyan, she is currently teaching creative writing at Manhattanville College. Nina lives in New York's Hudson Valley, where she has been books editor of Chronogram magazine since 2004.
