Gi60 (Gone in 60 Seconds) Theater Festival Features Plays by Renowned Playwrights

On Friday and Saturday, June 12 and 13, 2009 at 8 p.m., Brooklyn College’s Department of Theater hosts Gi60 (Gone in 60 Seconds), a theatrical experience featuring fifty plays, all sixty seconds long.  Some of the world’s most famous playwrights—including Jeffrey Sweet, Steven Ayckbourn, Steve Strangio, and Aurora de Peña—have submitted their works to this unique event.  It will take place at the College’s New Workshop Theater in the Walt Whitman Auditorium.

Diverse, fast-paced, sad, funny, thought-provoking, the scripts submitted by both playwrights of renown and early career playwrights from around the world, will be brought to life by a cast of Brooklyn College Theater BFA and MFA students, and professional guest artists.  This unique theatrical event is in partnership with Britain’s Screaming Media Productions, which is presenting and filming another fifty sixty-second plays at the Viaduct Theatre at Dean Clough in Halifax, England within the same week.

Canada’s De Peña, whose first play was staged at Gi60 five years ago, is attending the festival this year.  Her full-length work, 35 Little Plays about Hopeless Girls will get a stage reading directed by Festival Director Rose Bonczek this Saturday at 2 p.m. at the New Workshop Theater.  Strangio, an American playwright and screenwriter, will also attend the festival the same day.

Over 500 submissions were received this year from countries as diverse as Australia, Canada, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, among others.  All one hundred plays will also be available for viewing in YouTube, making it one of the most widely accessible writing festivals in the world.

Admission is $8.  Proceeds will benefit the Gi60 Collaboration Award, a scholarship given to a deserving Brooklyn College undergraduate who embodies the spirit of collaboration.  Gi60 will be available on YouTube and Gi60’s website.