Showcases are pretty standard nowadays, especially in the realm of Off-Off Broadway. The big idea, of course, is for several new playwrights to get together with short plays that are as yet unproduced, split the costs and consolidate the potential audience. In a showcase environment, the plays usually have something in common, and it's frequently thematic. Perhaps they all deal with love, loss, or death. In the case of the new showcase at manhattantheatresource, it's that they all occur on the F Train.
Playwrights Mac Rogers, Homer Frizzell, Joe Ganem and Jason Green decided to take their material and, instead of creating several short plays, try to meld them into an evening centered around the train that goes from Queens to Coney Island. According to playwright Mac Rogers, it's a "no frills examination of the ways in which familiar people connect vs. the ways total strangers connect in the environment of forced intimacy the subway creates." Though the NY subway is, on occasion, the very essence of entertainment, Gothamist will be interested to see how the F Train fares moving from the street to the theatre.
It's a short run, having opened Wednesday, September 22nd and continuing through this Saturday, so you'll have to jump to it if you don't want this train to pass you by.
You can hit the theatresource website for more details.
