June 25

New Plays!  Great Playwrights!  Celebrated Actors!  One Night Only!

2008 Season Premiere Benefit Performance

for the Opening of the  Berkshire Playwrights Lab

June 25th at 8:00 pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center

Wednesday, June 25th at 8:00 pm, at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, the Berkshire Playwrights Lab is kicking off its 2008 season with a benefit evening of staged readings of one-act plays featuring scripts by Joe Cacaci (Executive Producer The Hoop Life, The Education of Max Bickford) and Berkshire playwright Mike Dowling (Harvest, Tamarack House), and plays written specifically for the evening by Richard Dresser (Rounding Third, Augusta, The Pursuit of Happiness), Cindy Lou Johnson (Brilliant Traces, The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd), and Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross, The Untouchables, November, American Buffalo, Executive Producer of The Unit). Directing two of the plays will be Emmy Award-nominated director Matthew Penn, (Executive Producer, Law & Order 2004-07, NYPD Blue, The Sopranos).

Included in the cast are Oscar and Emmy-nominated actor Peter Riegert (Local Hero, Animal House, Sexual Perversity in Chicago), Dan Lauria ("The Dad" on the Emmy-winning The Wonder Years), Wendie Malick, four time Cable Ace Award-winner for Dream On, three time Emmy nominee as "Nina Van Horn" on Just Shoot Me, for which she also received a Golden Globe nomination, Tony Award-winning Elizabeth Franz (Death of a Salesman, Mornings at Seven), and Michael Rispoli (The Bronx is Burning, The Black Donnelly's and "Jackie Aprile" on The Sopranos). They will be joined by Bruce MacVittie, Alexandra Lydon, Jennifer Van Dyck, Victor Verhaeghe, Ylfa Edelstein, Carol Schneider, Bob Jaffe, Jim Frangione, and others.

Tickets are $50-$35-$25. All $50 ticket holders are invited to a post-performance reception on stage with Berkshire Playwrights Lab founders and cast.

The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center is located at 14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, MA. Tickets are available at the Box Office, 413-528-0100 and online.

The Berkshire Playwrights Lab 2008 Season is sponsored in part by the

Egremont Inn, South Egremont, Massachusetts.