Meanwhile, Adam Bock, whose play The Drunken City opened this week at Playwrights Horizons, says his show was inspired by the drunk, shrieking B&T girls that descend on his Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, whom he rather inexplicably claims to be fond of. "Drunk girls are funny," he said. "I love them. They come to New York and it's kind of magical, like going into the Forest of Arden in or A Midsummer Night's Dream. The lights are sparkling and there's all these cars going by and you don't know who you're going to meet. Of course they get excited and loud."

Speaking of excited and loud, that's how we got when we saw the long-dormant Nicky Silver, whose new play, Three Changes, also opens at Playwrights, in late August. His show's title, he told us, is inspired by a song by Blur frontman turned opera writer Damon Albarn, whom Silver worships. "He's very beautiful, a real genius," he said. "His journey from composer of disposable pop tunes to opera is the longest artistic journey I'm aware of. I have about 3,000 of his recordings on my iPod. I once found a dealer of his bootlegs in Moscow and he wouldn't take money because it's illegal. So I had to send him 300 American NHL hockey playing cards, which he was obsessed with." —Tim Murphy