Playwright Shares AVN Awards Experience in New York Times

NEW YORK—Playwright David West Read, who's new play set at the AVN Awards opens on Broadway next week, describes his experience attending the awards show in an article in today's New York Times. Read's play, The Performers, which begins previews next week at the Longacre Theater, is a romantic comedy set backstage at the awards. It stars Henry Winkler and Alicia Silverstone in main roles. Read, who had little knowledge of the industry or the awards show—he had never even been to Vegas—had a bit of a learning curve to conquer during his time at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. "On the morning of the Adult Video News Awards—the Oscars of the pornography industry—I woke up in my Las Vegas hotel room to the sound of a sex scene being shot next door," Read said. "I knew it was a sex scene, as opposed to plain old sex, because 1) the woman’s screams were deafening and otherworldly and 2) I was in Las Vegas on the morning of the Adult Video News Awards."The purpose of the trip, Read explains, was to gather information for set and costume design since the play was already written. While it was arranged by the producer of the play to have Sasha Grey chaperone Read and director Evan Cabnet around, the pair spoke to numerous performers, none of whom were named. "While the stars that we interviewed were nothing but gracious, the more we talked to them the more we realized that the glory days of the business, and by extension the awards show, were long since past," Read said. "When we finally made it to the awards that night, the disparity between the spectacle I had imagined and the scaled-back reality only widened." To read the full article, click here.