Be Bold! Productions’ 15th annual Players Theatre NYC Short Play Festival opened last weekend at The Players Theatre in the West Village, with Week 1 presenting five original short plays by five different playwrights. Plays are based around life in New York City and the joys and challenges that come with it. Each weekend for three weeks in June, a new selection of 15-minute original plays premieres to celebrate and examine what it means to live in NYC – whether it’s 2006 or 2026.
Last weekend’s audience-selected winner was ‘Uptown Express’, written by Kevin Cheng and directed by Emily White. In ‘Uptown Express’, lone commuter Noah (Griffin Garnett) waits for his delayed train to arrive. An Old Acquaintance, Zoe (Jemma Giberson), arrives on the platform instead. She coaxes Noah into talking, and it becomes clear that something about this reality isn’t right. Has the veil between this world and the next been ripped asunder? Or is Noah’s subconscious sending him a message about the self-destructive path he is on?