Andrew Stigler, left, and Stephen Abrams with Katie Cohn in a rehearsal of Lizzy Izzy by Holly Jensen, which will be presented by Perishable Theatre today, tomorrow, and Oct. 30-Nov. 2.

Vanessa Gilbert

For most of this month, Perishable Theatre has been devoting weekends to one of the winners of its biennial Women’s Playwriting Festival, staging a one-act play and filling out the rest of the evening with things like hip-hop and Portuguese fado music.

But for this weekend and next you can see all three plays in a single shot, which makes for a diverse evening of theater with at least one winner.

More than 190 playwrights submitted work to this year’s festival, which runs through Nov. 2. Three winners were chosen. And perhaps the meatiest of the offerings comes from local scribe Holly Jensen, who works as a public affairs manager at Fidelity Investments.

Jensen’s Lizzy Izzy, which was developed in workshops with its director, David Eliet, takes a look at violence among teenage girls, a growing trend, Jensen has found. It’s not a preachy work, but rather a sometimes poignant drama about hardscrabble lives that tends to ring true. It’s a play about how the stresses of life, the desire to fit in and the trauma resulting from an abusive relative can push someone to do something they regret.

Eighteen-year-old Isabella, who works as an exotic dancer, or “stripper” as her critical mother likes to say, is in jail when we first meet her. We know she is in trouble but we are not sure why.

Enter her lawyer, who can’t even remember to show up at the right courtroom, her uncle Carlos, who has been abusing her sexually, and her old-world mom, who won’t believe Carlos is capable of such behavior. She calls Isabella a liar when she tires to tell her mother about the abuse.

At the center of the play, though, is the volatile relationship between Isabella and her friend Amy. The two have a falling out over a boyfriend. Things heat up between the two, which leads to not exactly a surprise ending, but one that will move you.

Katie Cohn is an effective Isabella, although not the kind of person who seems capable of violence. She is someone caught up in horrible circumstances.

Playing opposite her as Amy is Erin Sheehan, who is much rougher around the edges. Stephen Abrams plays Mitch, Isabella’s married boyfriend. And Andrew Stigler makes a sleazy Uncle Carlos.

Less substantial is New York playwright Desi Moreno-Penson’s wacky Lazarus Disposed, about a woman whose husband has disappeared down the sink drain.

The play, of course, is not meant to be nearly so serious as Jensen’s submission. This is more a fantastical look at the grieving wife and her lover, along with a mysterious man, actor Luis Astudillo, who hides out in the bathroom. When he does emerge, he tells of how he once shrunk himself and lived inside his wife’s purse.

The play opens with D’Arcy Dersham as Bethany bewailing her husband’s disappearance. She has just held a memorial service for him with Ferdinand, who she has had an affair with. Mascara streams down her face. Laundry is also strewn about the stage, clothing belonging to her missing husband. She and Ferdinand, played by Patrick Harrison, sit around smelling it.

But as they reminisce strange gurgling noises come from the kitchen sink.

The acting is a little over-the-top, but Dersham is fine as the sometimes hysterical wife. The play is also whimsical, off-the-wall and thankfully clocks in at about a half-hour. Much more of this odd-ball tale would be a little hard to take.

Too bad Lila Rose Kaplan didn’t feel the same way. Her Biography of a Constellation tends to ramble and could have been a lot tighter.

The main action takes place in a planetarium, where actor Elise Morrison explains the life of stars to a group of schoolchildren. Mixed into the show are strands of Greek mythology which deal with how constellations got their names. Jillian Blevins’ Andromeda ends up being bound to a rock that turns out to be her mother Cassiopeia, played by Gloria Crist, who doubles as a Harvard librarian. Also woven into the plot is the story of a Baltimore woman named Annie Jump Cannon, who was one of the first women hired by Harvard in the 19th century to collect data on stars. Gregory Moss plays her grandson, who must prepare a eulogy for her funeral.

Both Kaplan’s and Jensen’s plays run about an hour each, and with intermission that makes for about three hours of theater with Lazarus Disposed thrown in. It’s an evening with its ups and downs, but one that offers an intriguing look at what’s being written these days.

The festival runs through Nov. 2 at Perishable Theatre, 95 Empire St., Providence. Tickets are $20, $15 for students, seniors and the military. Call (401) 621-6123 or log on to www.arttixxri.com