‘Four Plays by Two Guys from Brooklyn’ to launch series at Brownsville book store
BROWNSVILLE – “Four Plays by Two Guys from Brooklyn” opens the “First Friday” series at Geezers’ Literary Book Shop, which is located on the third floor of the Thompson House, 815 Water St., Brownsville, at 7 p.m. today. Jack Goodstein and Fred Lapisardi, both transplanted Brooklyn residents with strong theater credentials, offer a pair each of one-act plays as the inaugural effort in Geezers’ on-going short play workshops and festival.
From August through November, the project will offer staged readings of new plays the first Friday of each month, then in December’s short play festival when full productions of selected plays will be performed.
Geezers’ will also sponsor a short play contest for high school and college students for presentation at a spring festival. The announcements on this will be sent to the schools.
The two plays written by Jack Goodstein are “Gin Rummy,” which is about old New York friends playing cards and getting on each other’s nerves, and “Gray’s Eulogy,” which is about a somewhat pompous younger professor who attempts to deliver a eulogy over the uncooperative body of an older colleague who refuses to remain properly dead.
The two plays written by Fred Lapisardi are “Giannina,” which deals with a young Italian immigrant woman’s struggle with the 1890s Pittsburgh environment and her husband’s conflict as a middle management steel mill engineer during the Homestead strike.
His second play is “Medbh,” in which a somewhat stuffy father, amid tea cuts, ferns, lunches with his teenage daughter, who has convinced her mother that she is a witch.
Both Lapisardi and Goodstein retired from the English Department at California University of Pennsylvania. They both have an extensive background in playwriting and acting.
Lapisardi, who lives in Brownsville, also has been active in the theater as a director. He specializes in modern drama, as well as British and Irish literature.
To date, he has directed, acted 17 of 26 plays by W.B. Yeats.
In 1990, and again in 1991, Lapisardi worked with the annual W.B. Yeats International Theatre Festival at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, Ireland.
He also worked on several productions with the California University of Pennsylvania theater department.
Goodstein, who lives in Hopwood, has appeared in more than 60 plays throughout Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania.
He has also done film and commercial work. In May, he appeared in the independent film production, “Losing Hope.”
Goodstein also has written numerous plays, including the one-act play, “Pinochle,” which was given a stage reading at the ATHE conference in Toronto in July 1999 and was published this summer by the University of Charleston Press. He also wrote “Bride of the Father” in 2000 and “Creative Daydreaming” in 2001, which were produced by the Gallery Players of Park Slope in Brooklyn. His most recent play, “The Comic,” was staged by the Pulse Ensemble Theatre in New York from July 17-21 this year.
For more information on the staged readings and submission of plays, call 724-785-9010 or e-mail Geezersbks@worldnet.att.net.