Philly Theater Beat | See hot new plays free, find God at IKEA, catch Second City’s women at the Kimmel

PlayPenn, the renowned Philly workshop incubator, has announced its summer readings schedule. From July 17 to 28, each of the six lucky playwrights selected from among hundreds nationally will have two rounds of free public readings of their works-in-progress.

Here’s the lineup:

Also on tap are readings of two plays by PlayPenn alums: Esther Choi & The Fish That Drowned by Stephanie Kyung Sun Walters (July 22) and Buffalo Bill or How to Be a Good Man by Meghan Kennedy (July 23), plus 10-minute plays by PlayPenn interns (July 27).

It’s a great entertainment value and a glimpse at what’s new and exciting. Information: 215-242-2813, playpenn.org.

In late 2016, during a rehearsal break at 1812 Productions, actor Sean Close was reading Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upward, on spirituality, in front of Plays & Players Theatre.

Jennifer Childs, 1812 producing artistic director, came up. “And she said, ‘Why are you reading that? That’s on my nightstand right now,’ ” Close says.

“We kept talking, and we got into how we were both PKs — preacher’s kids.” Close’s dad is a “not really retired” Episcopal priest who had a parish in Haddonfield, and Childs’ dad is a Lutheran minister in Richmond, Va., and later the dean of Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Ohio.

Thus was begotten The God Project, through May 19 at 1812. “I’d been wanting to do something about God and comedy for a long time,” Childs says, “but I didn’t have a framework.” She and Close wrote the play and are two-thirds of the cast (along with Joilet Harris — and guess what role she plays).

“The standard image of God is a man in a long, white beard and a robe,” Childs says. “But if you put a different face on that, you get into some interesting places. Morgan Freeman as God is different from Gilbert Gottfried as God or ]Joan Rivers as God. Allowing yourself to imagine alternatives is just ripe for humor.”

And people are so certain their way of seeing things is the right way, she says: “The collision of certainties is a cause for comedy.”

Taking the God’s-eye view is also comic, Close says: “A lot of things in life feel life-or-death, but when you zoom out to the level of the Supreme Being, the way we take ourselves seriously can be really comic.”

The brilliant central metaphor of The God Project is the set, the back room of an IKEA-like furniture warehouse, where, as per the play’s slogan, “some assembly” is required.

In Colin McIlvaine’s set, carboard boxes tower on high shelves, hard to reach, hard to open. “You assemble your meaning, your purpose,” Close says.

“But,” Childs chimes in, “there are instructions you don’t understand, and you end up making something that doesn’t look anything like it looks in the owner’s manual.”