PURE, CHICAGO BOYS and More Set for 2013 McCarterLab Spring Festival, Now thru 2/23

Join some of the most talented emerging and established playwrights of the American theater during the McCarterLab Spring Festival 2013. Hear new plays read aloud in this series of unstaged readings beginning today, February 8 through Saturday, February 23. All events are free, but seating is limited and reservations are encouraged. To reserve seats, call (609) 258-2787.

All readings will begin at 7pm in The Berlind Rehearsal Room located in McCarter's Berlind Theatre.

The festival begins today, February 8 with Pure, by A. Rey Pamatmat, a Truman Capote Literary Fellow and the current Hodder Fellow in Playwriting at Princeton. An elegant biographical portrait of the British mathematician Alan Turing, who fathered computer science, and the people he loved. This reading will be directed by Eric Ting, Associate Artistic Director at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, CT.

The McCarterLab will continue Friday, February 15 with Five Mile Lake, a new play by Rachel Bonds, an exciting and talented young writer. In a small Pennsylvania town in the dead of winter, two sets of siblings struggle with the choices they've made in this delicate examination of love, pain, betrayal, small towns, the wide world, those who stay, and those who go away. This reading will be directed Adam Immerwahr, McCarter Theatre's Associate Producer and Resident Director at Passage Theatre in Trenton.

Following on Friday, February 22 will be a reading of Kathleen Tolan's searing historical drama Chicago Boys. Joe Nelson, an economic consultant to the Chilean government, begins his work full of laissez faire idealism. But as Joe becomes increasingly entangled in politics, love, and the many mysterious disappearances around the country, he must grapple with growing doubt and suspicion about his role in Chile's military coup. McCarter Theatre Artistic Director Emily Mann will direct this reading.

The festival will conclude Saturday, February 23 with 360, by one of America's most widely-produced and published contemporary playwrights, Steven Dietz. This sensuous and modern retelling of Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen follows the clandestine trysts, passionate desires, and devastating losses of a group of unwittingly interconnected people. Actors transform, hearts are broken, and love is never quite what it seems.

The McCarter Lab is a fluid, year-round program that supports the development of new plays and musicals, as well as investigations and new adaptations of classic works for McCarter's stages. Since 1990, McCarter has produced more than 50 new plays, musicals, and adaptations from leading and emerging American Playwrights, including Edward Albee, Eric Bogosian, Marina Carr, Steven Dietz, John Guare, Danai Gurira, Beth Henley, Tarell McCraney, Will Power, Theresa Rebeck, and ReGina Taylor, among many others. Our multi-faceted, highly customizable approach has made McCarter one of the foremost theaters in the nation for the development of new plays and musicals.

Special thanks to The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust for supporting McCarter Theatre Center.

For more information on McCarter Lab, visit www.mccarter.org/lab.

McCarter Theatre Center is easily accessible by car via US Route 1, Interstate 95/295, and NJ Route 206. Or take the train to McCarter: New Jersey Transit serves Princeton Junction via the Northeast Corridor Line. Then it's a ride of four minutes on New Jersey Transit's "Dinky" train to Princeton Station. McCarter is directly across the street at 91 University Place in Princeton, NJ.