Playwright and Drama faculty member Michael Weller is having a prolific start to the theater season, having recently opened two new plays off-Broadway: Beast at New York Theatre Workshop this past August and Fifty Words at MCC last week.

A dark comedic play that lies outside the bounds of realism, Beast is the story of two soldiers who were badly mutilated in the war in Iraq and their process of re-assimilating. The soldiers eventually get the commander-in-chief alone and tell him what they think about how things are going abroad.  Fifty Words features a couple in a marriage that is hitting a major rough patch; when their son is at a sleep-over at a friend’s house one evening, their resentments and revelations surface during an all-night fight.

In addition, Fifty Words is directed by Drama directing faculty member Austin Pendleton, who Weller gave the script to read three years ago when it was originally completed; it was when the play was presented in a reading earlier this year at Drama for program director Robert LuPone, and his co-artistic director of MCC Bernard Telsey and MCC associate artistic director William Cantler, that plans to produce the play moved forward.  “The minute the reading was over the three of us made eye contact and thought, ‘We want to do this play,’” Telsey said.

Beast is currently playing until October 12 at New York Theatre Workshop (www.nytw.org); Fifty Words is produced by MCC and currently playing at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (www.mcctheater.org).