At a final rehearsal, they're blocking Michael Small's "Got You" on the main stage - where to sit, when to sit, when to stand, how to stand, what to lean on.

Actors, writers and directors spill into a lounge area and outside in the cool, night air. That wise-looking 11-year-old kid hanging out? She'll step on stage in Lloyd Pace's "New Orleans" in a few minutes and command the action.

Later, Gabrielle Fox's "Real Estate," and Kathy H. Kafer's "The Lincoln Continental" will take one more run to make sure the exits and entrances are just so and actors know the choreography of each scene.

Good. That discovery is the exciting part of BPTE's sampler. You walk into the small theater in the park - the one with the comfy leather chairs - and find yourself adopting one or more of the plays.

And your involvement is part of the ensemble's laboratory approach to creating new theater. Your feedback will help shape each of the eight plays in development, with 16 actors playing 30 characters each night.

Discovery. That's the Blueberry method. The audience is part of the workshop. By the end of the evening, you'll find yourself drawn into the process of making something.

Each of the scenes and acts in the spring sampler tonight and tomorrow grew out of weekly Blueberry sessions. Some - Alan Lutwin's historical drama "Yussel Takes the Wheel" and Jean-Paul DeVellard's intense Southern work "The Conversation at Choctaw Junction" - are new scenes for plays that have been part of earlier samplers. Others mark the start of a new work.

Members play any and all of three roles: Writers get to see and hear their words rise from the page. Actors get new work to try on. Directors get to adapt pieces from scratch.

"It's an open discussion," artistic director Cynthia Granville says. "Are people shifting around because they're bored? Are the jokes funny? Writers can ask for something specific about character or dialogue, and members can respond as actors or directors or as an audience member."

From his first days with the ensemble, says Granville, Michael Small started bringing in scenes that have grown into "Got You." The sampler audience will see a New York couple crumbling under the pressure of 9/11, illness and real estate lust. He's scared to live in Manhattan anymore. She's scared not to.

The asking price is not the only deadly sin in "Real Estate," a scene set in Westchester. That's where nosy neighbors can watch a couple come apart. Gabrielle Fox, a teacher, thought she'd like to observe the Blueberry sessions, Granville says. Now she's working on the play's second act.

Nick Raio joined the group as an actor - he was in the fall production of "Through November Moonlight" - and his "Sheila and Angelo" has been part of previous samplers. This time, in a prequel of sorts, Raio's elderly couple find ways to value their relationship.

Kafer settled on her scene's title, "The Lincoln Continental," at Tuesday's rehearsal. A grown daughter, who wants her elderly father to stop driving, has taken his beloved car for a drive and wrecked it in an accident. Now she has to call him and explain.

After the sampler, a reading committee selects plays ready for a fully staged reading. Another audience takes a fresh look before a work becomes a mainstage production.

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