Ethan Coen Heads For Off-Broadway

NEW YORK, Feb. 25, 2008

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(AP) OK, so you've won the Academy Award for best picture of the year and your movie won you two other gold statuettes. What do you do for an encore?

Go off-Broadway for an extended commercial run of your acclaimed trio of one-act plays.

Ethan Coen, an Oscar winner (along with brother Joel) for "No Country for Old Men," will see his "Almost an Evening" resume performances March 20 at the Bleecker Street Theatre. The three short plays, together they run less than 90 minutes, were a critical and popular hit for the Atlantic Theater Company earlier this year at its tiny Stage 2.

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Photos: Oscar Entrances

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Now the off-kilter comedies, directed by Neil Pepe, are back for a limited run through June 1.

The plays, "Waiting," "Four Benches" and "Debate," build in intensity, with most of the laughs coming in the last comedy, "Debate," a not-what-it-seems theological contest between two characters called God Who Judges and God Who Loves.

There's no official word yet on casting, but the first production featured such names as F. Murray Abraham and Mark Linn-Baker.

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