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At a time when most serious drama being written and produced for the American stage aspires only to mainstream acceptance and high-toned mediocrity, an innovative new generation of playwrights based in New York City has emerged, crafting works that challenge and undermine the conventional structure, language, and characterization of commercial theater while rejecting outdated notions of the avant-garde. New Downtown Now brings together ten new works that exemplify the playfulness, excitement, and possibilities of the theater. Characterized by fragmenting structure, hypnotic rhythms, kaleido-scopic imagery, unpredictable characters, and lyrical language, these plays resemble puzzles from which the writers are teasing revelations. Though disparate in subject matter and style, with characters ranging from a sushi chef to a soldier and settings from a taxicab to a live television broadcast, these highly original plays share a commitment to formal experimentation that places them beyond the psychological clichés of the majority and the cold condescension of postmodernism. The anthology includes Interim by Barbara Cassidy; Tragedy: a tragedy by Will Eno; Nine Come by Elana Greenfield; Shufu-Sachiko and Enoshima Island by Madelyn Kent; The Appeal by Young Jean Lee; The Vomit Talk of Ghosts by Kevin Oakes; Ajax (por nobody) by Alice Tuan; Apparition, an uneasy play of the underknown by Anne Washburn; Demon Baby by Erin Courtney.Mac Wellman is the author of numerous plays and the recipient of three Obie awards, most recently in 2003 for lifetime achievement. He is professor of playwriting at Brooklyn College. Young Jean Lee is a playwright and director, and member of the Obie award-winning company 13P. Jeffrey M. Jones is a playwright and curator of the Obie award-winning Little Theater at Tonic in New York.

The metaphor “beyond the pale” refers to something that’s unacceptable and, as James M. Harding argues in this book, “almost always refers to something—an activity, an action, or an act—that is performed.” In this book, Harding recalls that historically the pale marked contested political boundaries and that what lay beyond the pale was considered to be a dangerous frontier. Siding with seemingly excessive and unreasonable acts and with the artists and activists who produce them, Harding brings together a series of ideas and performances that operate beyond the pale and asks readers to examine them on their own terms.

Drawing on political science, critical theory, and philosophy, Harding investigates instances of self-immolation, life-threatening journeys across deserts and seas, radical political hoaxes, extreme speech acts, and anti-police activism. The book’s five chapters consist of a series of meditations, each with an easily identifiable scholarly logic and clear argument, though the connections between the meditations are left up to the reader. Together these meditations urge readers to understand that “beyond the pale” acts are frequently the product of a sense of urgency that preempts the dictates of accepted reason, conventional logic, and safety.