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A staple of New York's theater scene has been heating up the city's off-off Broadway with his first annual festival of one-act plays this month. Lizzie Crocker has your front-row seat.

A suicidal woman is persuaded from the edge of a subway platform. A biracial jazz musician attempts to pass for a white man in 19th-century Louisiana. A girl in search of love tries to find Mr. Right in a sea of losers on Match.com. Anything is possible during Midwinter Madness, the three-week-long festival of one-act plays that's been heating up New York City's off-off Broadway scene this month.

Related story on The Daily Beast: A Broadway Great Reveals His Secrets

John Chatterton, a staple in New York City's theater scene, conceived this year's first annual Midwinter Madness Festival with a list of conditions for its participants: Any and every subject matter flies; production requirements must be minimal (i.

Fox 2000 has hired Mark Bomback (Unstoppable) to adapt Robert Kurson’s Shadow Divers, the account of two divers who tested their physical limits to solve the mystery of how a German U boat came to be within just sixty miles of the coast of New Jersey. Marriages dissolved and friends died in the process, but the once bitter rivals developed “an almost mystical sense of brotherhood.”

Shadow Divers is housed at Tony and Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions. Hit the jump for the synopsis of Kurson’s book.

Variety reports Fox 2000 acquired the rights to the story in 2004, and it’s easy to see why. It sounds fascinating, and perfect for the screenplay structure. The mystery drives the narrative, but Bomback gets to play with the themes of friendship, obsession, and the triumph of the human will.

I hope Bomback is willing to make this more than just a...

Robert Schwentke ( The Time Traveler's Wife , Flighplan , upcoming Red ) is circling the Fox 2000 adaptation of Robert Kurson's Shadow Divers . Deadline New York says the project is one of two that can be next for Schwentke - the other being the Robert Ludlum thriller The Osterman Weekend . William Broyles wrote the Shadow Divers script which will be tweaked under Schwentke's supervision. Here's how the book is described by Random House: In the tradition of Jon Krakauer.s Into Thin Air and Sebastian Junger.s The Perfect Storm comes a true tale of riveting adventure in which two weekend scuba divers risk everything to solve a great historical mystery.and make history themselves. For John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, deep wreck diving was more than a sport. Testing...