Students, faculty, and alumni of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop will perform “unstageable plays of daring and poetry” at the inaugural Iowa City Poets Theater at 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, in Lower City Park's Riverside Theater.

Joyelle McSweeney

The free event will include Exotic Consultants by alumna and visiting faculty member Joyelle McSweeney, joined by Johannes Göransson; I Am You This Morning and You Are Me Tonight by Chris Martin and Mary Austin Speaker, performed by Mark Mayer and Ashley Colley; and The Stork by Daniel Poppick, only performable by a cast of thousands.

Co-organizer Martin reminds potential audience members, “It will all take place outside, so dress accordingly and bring whatever comestibles are estimable.”

McSweeney and Göransson write in many genres, publish Action Books, and are founding contributors to the collective blog Montevidayo. They are faculty members at the University of Notre Dame.

Martin is the author of American Music and Becoming Weather. This October, Flying Object will serially publishCHAT, an eclogue with Cleverbot. It will appear on their website each day for a month with accompanying illustrations by various artists. He is also the author of How to Write a Mistake-ist Poem and the forthcoming enough, and an editor at Futurepoem books.

Speaker is the author of the chapbooks In the End There Were Thousands of Cowboys, Abandoning the Firmament, and The Bridge, 20 Love Poems for 10 Months, and the forthcoming full-length collection, Ceremony, winner of the 2012 Slope Editions book prize. Her poems have recently appeared in epiphany, the Boston Review, Boog City Reader, the Iowa Review, la fovea, High Chair, Lungfull, and the New Orleans Review. She operates a tiny design studio in Iowa City.

For a UI arts calendar and details about upcoming events, visit the new Arts Iowa website.