river tree

This is the second volume of Plays from New River, showcasing a place where gifted writers of plays and screenplays are paid and nurtured to write whatever they most want to write. These three very different plays are among the results. Mark Eisman’s Feasting on Cardigans explores with whimsical humor a pair of dedicated exterminators and the emotional effect they have on those lives they touch. M.Z. Ribalow’s Tiger in the Tree is an intriguing thriller that as it proceeds becomes about much more than one might assume at the beginning. James McLure’s Baseball Game of the Week is a deceptively moving, always funny meditation on progress, memory and baseball.

The late M.Z. Ribalow served as artistic director of New River Dramatists. He was an award-winning poet, author and playwright, whose plays received some 180 productions worldwide. Playwright Mark Eisman lives in New York. He has received two daytime Emmy nominations, a New York State playwriting fellowship, a Writers Guild screenwriting fellowship, two Beverly Hills Theater Guild/Julie Harris Playwriting Awards, the Charles MacArthur Fellowship and a playwriting scholarship from Primary Stages theater. He has spent four summer residencies at the New River Dramatists. The late James McLure was involved in the founding of the Lion Theatre Co. in New York City. His plays have been performed worldwide. He was a core playwright member of the New River Dramatists from it first year in 1999 and developed many of his new plays there.