Backstage: Capital Fringe Festival Is a Chance for Playwrights to Shine in D.C.

Callie Kimball is interested in love and pain. The author of a pair of one-acts under the title "MAY 39th/40th" (July 11-24) explains, "I'm very interested in the ways that people try to connect to each other, or think that they want to connect to each other . . . how people establish what they want from each other and how they usually don't get it." She recently moved to New York after several years of writing and acting in Washington. Her adaptations of Aristophanes' "Peace" and Shakespeare's epic poem "The Rape of Lucrece" ran at Washington Shakespeare Company.

In "MAY 39th," set 1,000 years in the future, a couple ponder how to proceed after their first date. In "MAY 40th" a patient asks a doctor to heal his blindness. Kimball doesn't mind big changes at the last minute; she and director Christy Denny switched the genders of the two characters in "MAY 40th." "You just have to go with your gut instinct," she says. "It just forces an economy into the writing."

In terms of romantic connections, Brent Stansell's very adult solo piece, "My Fabulous Sex Life" (July 9-23), might be one of the riskiest new works at Fringe. A dramaturge and theater educator who moved from California to attend George Washington University and just stayed here (with an interruption to get an MFA at Brooklyn College), Stansell wrote the play for academic credit.

Rather than chronicle adolescent sexual awakenings or how he came out as gay to his family, he chose to write about his dangerous sexual liaisons as an adult. Stansell is quick to add that safe sex is a given for him, and that the liaisons demonstrate his need for romantic risk. "Even though they're all unified by sex, all these stories are so different. Some of them are just really hilarious. Some of them are situations that were really scary. Some of them were depressing. Some of them were thrilling," he says.

But the scariest part might be performing the piece in front of audiences. "There are moments when I slip into performing the stories themselves, but there's a lot of looking into the eyes of the people staring back at me . . . definitely a scary prospect," Stansell says. He's hoping adventurous straight audiences will give him a listen. "For gay audiences, there'll probably be no problem. It's probably mild. But for a mixed audience . . . it'll probably push some buttons," he says.

Visit http://www.capfringe.org and click on specific show titles to get details on performances and venues.

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-- Signature Theatre will hold a cabaret to benefit Washington singer-educator-actress Jane Pesci-Townsend on July 13 at 8 p.m. Pesci-Townsend has been battling cancer for several years. A musical-theater teacher at Catholic University and frequent performer in musicals and cabarets around town, Pesci-Townsend became a local theater legend when she stepped in for an ailing Christine Baranski as Mrs. Lovett in "Sweeney Todd" during the Kennedy Center's 2002 Sondheim Celebration. Sherri L. Edelen, Tracy Lynn Olivera, Evan Casey, Channez and Rob McQuay, Eleasha Gamble, Matt Connor and Nick Blaemiere are among the performers who will sing to raise funds to defray Pesci-Townsend's medical bills. Signature's Eric Schaeffer says, "People can show up at the door and just make a donation for admission, or send checks to Signature Theatre c/o JANE." For more information, call 703-820-9771.