What do we do in difficult times? In times that feel chaotic, threatening, unfamiliar? Are we living in a time like this in the USA? I feel that way. I think many of us do. My original title for this evening of three plays was “Peace in the Time of War.” It is a program of coping through art.
“Philoctetes on Spring Garden Street,” is a satire. It pokes at those who hurt us. We laugh as we grow in insight.
Philoctetes is the magic bowman of the Odyssey who shoots arrows that cannot miss. Odysseus maroons him on a deserted island when he is bitten by a snake, suffering a wound that stinks and cannot heal. He is translated to a traffic island on Spring Garden St, Philadelphia, where he begs and dances.
“Love Luv,” is inspired by Shell, a person who lives in Muncie IN, a once prosperous city, economically hollowed out when the automotive industry left. Shell overcomes a childhood of economic and psychological hardship. Actualizes herself as a person. Finds love.
We encounter African America ancestor stories that feel like stories told at family gatherings. At times they are funny. At times they are hard to listen to. Hearing stories like this gives power. It’s how we get over.
Opening
Saxophone calls us to attention / Singer sings opening of How I Got Over
Narrator says the following: I have sat at our family table many times to share a meal. When I lived on the Jewish section of the Lower East Side, as a child and a teenager my mother’s mother, my maternal grandmother, would bring our family together to share a meal. Perhaps your family has a tradition like that. Often we told family stories, histories, our history. Some of the stories were difficult to hear. Some were funny. Many were profound, insightful. I carry these stories with me. They have added much to my life.
I think of The Pork Chop Wars by the much revered artist, Laurie Carlos, as family stories. Stories like the ones my family still shares. Laurie was an African American Artist. These are African American stories. African American histories told with vividness and courageous honesty. They inform. They deepen experience. Join us as we engage in this
universal tradition.
My family came from….

Drucie McDaniel, Nate C Jones, and Wharton Track in PHILOCTETES ON SPRING GARDEN STREET written and directed by Dennis Moritz @ the Philly Fringe 2025

Drucie McDaniel in LOVE LUV written and directed by Dennis Moritz @ the Philly Fringe 2025

Esha Thornton, Regina Robinson, and Russell Fowler in the World Premiere Staged Reading of Laurie Carlos' THE PORK CHOP WARS (directed by Dennis Moritz) @ the Philly Fringe 2025.


by Len Lear
//What do the three plays that will be performed from Sept. 14 to 17 have in common?
“They arise from life in the USA,” answered Moritz. “They have jokes that make you laugh and abruptly stop laughing. They have poetry language in service of character and action. They have surprise, surprise, surprise, and actors who inhabit these works with vividness and power.”//

by A.D. Amorosi
//Where thoughtful, provocative, funny, relentless paragraphs are concerned, Moritz states, that unites these three plays so seamlessly, comes down to the DNA of the USA.//

Playwright/Director/Producer, Founding N1 Partner, Artistic Director N1 CrawlSpace) writes a lot of plays. His work appears on mains tage and in improvised spaces. Producers include The Public, Painted Bride, Freedom Theater, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, St Marks, Bowery Poetry Club, Sticky, Theater Double, N1, Theatre Ariel, HERE, Boog. He prefers to work in bars and art galleries. His scripts have been published in theater magazines and poetry magazines Angel Hair/United Artists, the longtime poetry press, published two collections of his theater works: the only plays in that catalogue. He earned an MFA in theater writing atTemple University. Dennis grew up on the Lower East Side of New York where he absorbed quick change rhythms and visuals. He feels at home with the intense personalities of that neighborhood. Interior breakdowns and vulnerability contrast to an aggressive exterior, a duality that informs many of his plays.

Co-Founding Artistic Director/Executive Producer/Director/Curator/ Sound Designer/Composer, RCB has served as dramaturg, literary manager, director, and collaborator with Dennis Moritz since the December 2011 founding of N1Theatre in Quechee, VT. He is the author of Itself (Atropos, 2011), Thoughtrave: An Interdimensional Conversation with Lady Gaga (punctum, 2016), and the forthcoming They Fade, The Words Fade: On the Metabolic Theatre of Dennis Moritz (2026). N1Theatre/Lab will premiere his monologues The Last Notebook of Laufen Geberit, Zen Cohen’s Return, and A Naughty Night to Swim In, as well as workshop his three-part screenplay Turtles (with direction and dramaturgy by Clinton Turner Davis). Baum's complex, operatic, and cinematic approach to theatre involves working inside improvised, non-traditional raw spaces such as rural cafes (Limerick Irish Eatery in Quechee, VT), non-traditional museum spaces (Main Street Museum in White River Junction, VT), urban art galleries (iMPeRFeCT Gallery in Germantown, Philadelphia). He was awarded a doctoral degree in Philosophy and Media Studies from the European Graduate School. He served as an August Wilson Fellow in Dramaturgy and Literary Criticism at UMN-Twin Cities and Penumbra Theatre with additional assignments at The Guthrie, Red Eye, Doug Anderson's Théâtre du Vieux Nez, Chris Danowski's Theatre in My Basement, Soap Box, and Theatre de la Jeune Lune (Moving Company). He received his MA from Dartmouth College and BA from Catholic University.
At Dartmouth, 1996-1998 and then until 2005 Robert was mentored by
Pulitzer Prize winning playwright August Wilson.
A Film by Robert Craig Baum
Guerrilla film shot 2/13/2020 in the Lower East Side of NYC
A Film by Will Rittweger of Dennis Moritz's Play Love Song

International theatre, performance, and experimental media project founded by Robert Craig Baum in Vermont, USA with programming dedicated to the
work of Dennis Moritz.
We now also develop new talent, scripts, and new media projects including theatre, film, streaming, and intermedia arts.
N1Academy (academic courses) and N1Press support our
mission and vision.
Directed by Dennis Moritz and Robert Craig Baum . . . A kinetic, immediate, and exact representation of our approach to theatre and film dramaturgy and performance.
For inquiries about venue availability or our upcoming events, send us a message.
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