Mmmm! Mmmm! Good drama!

“Get’cher fresh plays! Get’cher piping-hot fresh plays!”

Yes, that’s the cry this weekend from Austin Script Works, the esteemed (and increasingly nationally known) playwrights organization, which has four new scripts just out of the oven that it wants you to sample. This dramatic smorgasbord is called Pulse Works, and it got its start last fall as a way for four ASW members to mold new plays into their final shapes. Each playwright gets a director, dramaturge, cast, 30 hours of time to work on their play, and, since audience response is critical to the final shaping of a new play, a staged public reading at Hyde Park Theatre. ASW artistic director C. Denby Swanson invites you to take a taste of these delectable new dramas:

Lost & Found by Kendall Lynch

A boy whose mama is gone and whose daddy can’t grow squat, buried forks, pans, and other clinking things. A story of what’s lost and what’s left.

Fear of a Fuhrer by Abi Basch

Bodies hang by strings in an abandoned warehouse, ants cry, stars fall from the sky, a coin monkey claps. An approach to the impossible impulses of violence and devotion.

Infinity = Infinity + 1 by Skipper Chong Warson

A rush to the altar, a messy divorce, coming out, writing a coffeetable book about the Beatles, complex theories of math. A moral fable about contemporary relationships.

Wind Runners and Myth Makers by Zell Miller III

Orpheus as modern-day performance poet, with a Eurydice who carries revolution on her tongue. A myth remade through hip-hop music, spoken word poetry, and funky basslines.

All performances take place at Hyde Park Theatre, 511 W. 43rd. For more information, call 454-9727 or visit www.scriptworks.org.

This article appears in Iraqi Day of the Dead.