Winter Play Reading Festival Continues with “The Effect”

Third Avenue Playhouse (TAP) continues its Winter Play Reading Festival with Lucy Prebble’s The Effect on Feb. 18 at 7:30 pm. Alan Kopischke directs Amy Ensign, Nick Hoover, Evie King and Laurel Brooks in the study of love, science, and ethics. Kopischke will also take a role in the play.

The Effect centers around two volunteers (Hoover and King) who sign up for a drug trial for people suffering from depression. They begin to fall in love. Or is that just an effect of the drugs? Does it matter if it is? What are the ethical responsibilities of those (Kopischke, Ensign) running the drug trial? How might love and other emotions affect their perception of those ethics? And what are the responsibilities of those who have more information than others?

This funny, moving and very human play explores questions of sanity, neurology and the limits of medicine, alongside ideas of fate, loyalty and the inevitability of physical attraction.

Kopischke saw a production of The Effect Off Broadway at the Barrow Street Theater last year and knew this was a play he wanted to do in Door County. Kopischke relates, “The Effect explores love, science and ethics at the intersection of the three in a fascinating way. I love play readings and am thrilled that TAP is committing resources to this festival.”

The festival continues the following day, Feb. 19, with Edward Albee’s The Goat at 2 pm. The Goat, is directed by Robert Boles and features Alan Kopischke, Amy Ensign, James Valcq and Logan Thomas. The Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Albee is considered one of the greatest American playwrights of the 20th century. In The Goat, Albee tells the story of Martin (Kopischke), a very successful architect who has just turned fifty. Martin leads an ostensibly ideal life with his loving wife (Ensign) and gay teenage son (Thomas). But when he confides to his best friend (Valcq) that he is also in love with a goat named Sylvia, he sets in motion events that will destroy his family and leave his life in tatters.

Admission is pay-what-you-can at the door. For a full list of plays, visit thirdavenueplayhouse.com or call 920.743.1760.