Empathy School and Love Story, two monologues by Princeton Arts Fellow Aaron Landsman, are receiving their New York premieres concurrently this week at Abrons Art Center. Both plays have been chosen as New York Times Critics’ Picks for the way Landsman depicts varieties of loneliness. Empathy School follows an out-of-work bus driver on an overnight ride through rural Illinois; Love Story is about a disappearing city, two people navigating it, and a fidgety, obsessive follower.

Landsman is finishing up his second year of teaching and artistic collaboration at Princeton University as a 2014-16 Princeton Arts Fellow. Of his opportunity to create these new works, Landsman notes:

“This show would absolutely not have happened at this level without a Princeton Arts Fellowship.”

Performances of Empathy School and Love Story run Wednesday, April 27 through Saturday, April 30 at 7:30 p.m. at Abrons Art Center, 466 Grand Street at Pitt Street, lower East Side.

Read the full NYT review here. Learn more about the Princeton Arts Fellowships here…