Melissa James Gibson: city living; A playwright's weighty themes come to rest on younger shoulders.(profiles)(Interview)

Sasha's problem, as problems go, appears manageable enough. This 11-year-old, the heroine of Melissa James Gibson's new children's play Brooklyn Bridge, must write an essay for school but cannot find a pen. Yet this complication becomes but one sapling within a precocious fifth-grader's larger forest of self-inquiry.

Like other frustrated creators populating Gibson's dramas--the trio of artistically inclined neighbors in [sic], or the wheel-spinning doctoral students of Suitcase, or those that resemble flies from a distance--Sasha moves within a holding pattern of avoidance and ...

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