This past Tuesday night I hit up the weekly artists group hosted by Naked Angels. The first thing I noticed was that the outside of the Tribeca Screening Room is now plastered with Tribeca Film Festival signs, like wrapping paper for the great gifts that must lie within if Robert DeNiro has anything to do with it. Major improvements have been made to the interior as well. The bar area is more spacious than I last remembered it, with cozy leather booths semi-circled around candle-lit tables.

There were only three people at the bar, but after several minutes, more began to trickle in. I used to joke that for an offbeat theatre group, the ensemble was city-fiably beautiful, with a handful of eternally wounded types mixed in…but to my surprise Tuesday’s crowd seemed approachable.  Joe Danisi, one of the directors of Tuesdays@9, mingled with the crowd. He looked tanned and handsome as usual, in that is-he-or-isn’t-he-gay sort of way.

A man sat down at my table, in the chair to my right, without speaking.  He looked alot like a larger Vern Troyer. (“Mini-Me”, for those not familiar with the actor’s name.) He removed a hardcover copy of American Democracy from his green messenger bag and began to read…and shift…and fidget…and squirm some more.

“Vern” grabbed his green messenger bag and rummaged through it, then turned it over and shook it furiously. Finally, a packet of Raisenettes spilled out of the bag and onto the table. But he had not found what he was looking for. He ran his hand throughout his bag again and started to curse.  Then he turned to me.

“Can I have a piece of paper?” he asked.

I was a little scared, so I gave him two.

“What are you working on?” he launched in.

“Oh…just some notes…writing for a website,” I said.  “And you?” I asked to be polite.

“Screenplay.”

“Oh. Cool. Feature length?”

“Yup. Feature. I’ve written four. One of them has been optioned.”

“Oh…well…congratulations.”

“Yup. You ever write any screenplays?” he asked me.

“Actually, I have. I got into television hoping to write scripts.”

“Yeah, well, life sucks without an agent,” he said, and turned back to the pieces of paper I had given him.

So I was relieved when Shannon, editor extraordinaire, arrived.  After a few minutes the lights began to blink and we were whisked into the small theatre next door.

Here’s how Tuesdays@9 works. The group meets every Tuesday, at – you guessed it – 9 p.m., and anyone is welcome. It’s sponsored by the Naked Angels Theatre Company, it boasts some fun names and some notable works, and the best part is, it’s free (unless you want to make a donation or spend your dollars on a drink or two beforehand, which many opt to do). The two directors, Joe Danisi and Stephanie Cannon, do a great job of wrangling the crowd, emceeing the event, and even stepping in for some fine-tuned acting, although I found they were a little hard to reach when I first asked to be put on their mailing list. Fortunately you can now request to be on their mailing list online.

If you’re a writer, you can submit ten pages of your play, screenplay, or novel directly to Joe or Stephanie, but they discourage follow-up calls. If your work is selected for the following week – and they choose five or six excerpts a week – they’ll get in touch with you. You arrive at Tuesdays@9 with the appropriate number of scripts for your characters and handpick actors that night, out of the crowd. These cold readings are self-serving for both the writers and the talent. If you’ve written a comedy and the jokes fall flat – or worse, if you’ve written a deep and meaningful drama and you see people suppressing their laughter – you know you have to re-re-write. If you’re an actor asked to summon up a character on the fly, it prepares you well for the world of auditioning. Oh, and West Coasters, there’s an L.A branch of Tuesdays@9.

Let me also note that they welcome acts by musicians with minimal equipment. This is unfailingly some floppy-haired boy with a James-Dean-jeans-and-T look, an acoustic guitar, and a song about a girl that broke his heart.

This past Tuesday night Shannon and I were members of the audience to a poignant short story about swans, a play that takes place on a roof top (that elicited a good laugh when the actor, very seriously, pronounced Icarus as “eye-CARE-us”), an endearing play about a daughter and her aging obstinate father, a play about a widowed waitress’ life post 9/11, amongst others. The strangest act of the night was undoubtedly the play about two people who decided to change into each others’ clothes, for no reason, and in a car no less, because the female character was agoraphobic and refused to get out of the car.

It’s fun to be around people so passionate about their work, and it’s inspiring to hear the way different writers phrase things or the way different actors convey them.  If you’re an aspiring writer or actor, I’d recommend attending a Tuesdays@9 if you get the chance – but know that for the month of July, they are moving to Thursdays at a different location. Check out the website – and see you there.