TO JULY 26

What: The minithriller The Indian Wants the Bronx and the vaguely autobiographical mystery Hopscotch, two one-acts by Pulitzer-nominated off-Broadway stalwart Israel Horovitz, author of Park Your Car in Harvard Yard and the Ibsen adaptation Year of the Duck. (Indian, which won Horovitz an Obie in 1968, was the vehicle for Al Pacino’s New York stage debut.) Who: The brand-new Moonlight Theatre Co., founded by Signature Theatre production manager Dwayne Nitz and a gaggle of friends, all veterans of a student-run experimental theater program at James Madison University. They’d promised each other that “the first one to sell out and make a lot of money would establish a theater company, and the rest would come and join him. And that kind of happened recently,” when Nitz took leave from Signature to work on a flashy educational/anti-drug show for the giant sports medicine conglomerate Healthsouth. Why Horovitz: “The characters are young, and we wanted to play people our own age,” Nitz says. “And they’re short, which allows us to do two and involve more people. And the people who were available fit Horovitz’s characters.” Why Moonlight: In part because of “the aesthetics, the dreaminess of it.” But also because “all of us are definitely moonlighting as actors and/or directors. Theater is certainly something we hope to eventually do full-time, but for now we hold a variety of interesting jobs”—including “garden-variety waiters and waitresses, temps, headhunters, grill cooks, landscapers, and substitute teachers.” At 10 p.m. Friday & Saturday, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, and 7:30 p.m. & 10 p.m. next Friday & Saturday at District of Columbia Arts Center, 2438 18th St. NW. $10. (202) 462-7833. (Trey Graham)