Dark Humor in New Works Fest

Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater will present its annual New Works Festival this weekend with free readings of plays and musicals in development by four writers, beginning tomorrow evening at 7 with “The Roommate” by Jen Silverman.

Subsequent programs will feature “Community” by Stephen Kaplan, Saturday at 3 p.m.; “From Ship to Shape” by Walker Vreeland, Saturday at 8, and “The Man in the Ceiling” by Jules Feiffer, Sunday afternoon at 3.

“The Roommate” is a dark comedy about a recently divorced woman, Sharon, looking for someone to share her Iowa home. She finds Robin, who needs a place to hide and a chance to start over. Ms. Silverman’s plays have been produced at theaters around the country, including the Playwrights Realm in Manhattan, the Yale Rep in New Haven, the Actors Theatre of Louisville, and InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia. 

“Community” is a play-within-a-play that engages issues of race in the theater, as reflected by the interaction, onstage and off, of actors in a community theater production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Mr. Kaplan has written 13 plays that have been produced throughout the U.S. and was a playwright-in-residence at the True False Theatre Company in New York City.

Mr. Vreeland’s voice is familiar to East End radio audiences. In addition to his current role as host of the Afternoon Show on WBAZ-FM, he has been heard on stations throughout the metropolitan area. He is also an actor, singer, and playwright, whose “From Ship to Shape” chronicles his experience as a lead singer for the Norwegian Cruise Line, which led to a mental breakdown and subsequent recovery.

Last week’s issue of The Star included a feature on Mr. Feiffer and his illustrated musical comedy, “The Man in the Ceiling,” the story of a young would-be cartoonist who considers himself a failure.

Bay Street has also announced the addition of a fourth production, “The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey,” to its summer Mainstage schedule. The one-man play, written and performed by James Lecesne, will run from July 18 through July 24.

The story concerns the disappearance of a 14-year-old gay boy harassed by his peers in a small New Jersey shore town. Leonard never appears, but Mr. Lecesne, who wrote the Academy Award-winning short film “Trevor,” portrays various other characters in the town, from the detective investigating the case to a mob widow who sees one of Leonard’s shoes floating in a lake to a hair stylist who reports the boy’s disappearance.

In a 2015 review for The New York Times, Charles Isherwood wrote, “A show about the brutal murder of a 14-year-old boy should not, logically speaking, leave you beaming with joy. And yet that’s the paradoxical effect of ‘The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey,’ a superlative solo show at Dixon Place written and performed by James Lecesne, himself a pretty darn dazzling beacon of theatrical talent.”

Tony Speciale, artistic director of the Abingdon Theatre Company in Manhattan, will direct the production, which will have music by Duncan Sheik.