It's not that City Theatre under the leadership of Tracy Brigden has slackened in its primary mission of staging new plays. It continues to commission new works, to help develop and workshop them and to feature those and other new plays in its mainstage season.

In fact, in yesterday's announcement of two-thirds of the six-play subscription series for 2008-09, there are already two world premieres. One, the musical "Long Story Short," is no surprise, since as "An Infinite Ache" it was given a one-act hearing last year at City's MOMENTUM 07. The other, "Speak American," set in an English-language class in 1904 Pittsburgh, is a new play by Eric Simonson that City commissioned for Pittsburgh's 250th birthday.

However, the other two plays just announced come hot from New York stages, one even from Broadway, which must be the rarest source for City work. In its limited Broadway run, closing March 30, "The Seafarer," latest of the tersely poetic moral dramas by Irishman Conor McPherson ("The Weir"), featured an A-list Irish/English cast. And Tarell Alvin McCraney's "The Brothers Size," a comedy about Louisiana brothers, recently attracted a lot of positive attention at the New York Public Theater.

City's "Seafarer" may be the first to be announced post-Broadway, although City doesn't yet know when it or these other three shows will be staged in the '08-09 season. Dates won't be decided until it settles on the remaining two shows and arranges the six into a schedule.

Normally, Brigden announces just three plays at this time of year, filling out the rest of the season by summer. You can't hurry new plays; they become ready for prime time at different speeds. But while Brigden doesn't see any special significance in announcing four plays at this time, it is suggestive that two, although still "new," are already established.

She notes that second productions of a play are usually better than world premieres, because some of the plays' pitfalls are already clear. This explains Brigden's success this past year with the most literal form of "second production," Keith Reddin's "The Missionary Position," which she staged here last April and then re-mounted last month, with the same cast and designers, at the Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell, Mass.

"You get to make it better," Brigden notes with the pleasure of one who discovers you don't have to keep carrying that extra 100 pounds of rocks.

With "Missionary Position," a sharp comedy about the primary campaign experience of a right-wing political operative, there was the advantage that its jokes were perfectly in season: When the Polish housekeeper said, "It's time for a change," there were huge laughs. If all goes well, "Missionary Position" might ride the wave of this political season right into New York.

Brigden and City are always working simultaneously on several productions, past, present and future. When she outlined these plans for next season, "Long Story Short" was in the midst of a two-week workshop. After last year's MOMENTUM, it had also had a weeklong workshop in Palo Alto, Calif. "The classic stories of taking a musical out of town are true," Brigden says. She said creators Brendan Milburn and Valerie Vigoda could spend four days on a new song, hear it in the show, realize it doesn't work and cut it immediately.

For its City workshop, the two-person "Long Story Short" had no less a cast than Deborah Craig ("Spelling Bee" on Broadway) and Wayne Wilcox ("Rent" movie), along with Pittsburgh's Doug Levine, whom Brigden calls "as good as any Broadway musical director I know."

You get performers of Broadway quality for a Pittsburgh workshop because local theater has a good reputation but more because Milburn and Vigoda, a married couple who are the heart of the "cult band" GrooveLily, are hot right now, with their "Striking 12" a 2006 off-Broadway hit and their "Sleeping Beauty Wakes," written for Los Angeles' Deaf West, a record-breaker at the Kirk Douglas Theatre.

In other words, top-notch pros do workshops because of the example of "Rent" or "Spring Awakening," where actors in the original workshops found themselves on Broadway a few years later.

Here are the plays coming to City, with two more shows and the dates for all still to be announced.

• "Speak American" (world premiere), written and directed by Academy Award-winner Simonson. Commissioned to celebrate Pittsburgh 250, it explores heritage, pride and the meaning of home.

• "The Seafarer," by McPherson, directed by Brigden. A full house of lost souls is passing a Christmas Eve in Dublin with whiskey and poker when the stakes are mysteriously raised.

• "Long Story Short," by Milburn and Vigoda, based on "An Infinite Ache" by David Schulner, directed by Brigden. The story of Hope and Charles is set to a contemporary score in this romance from first kiss to a surprising finale.

• "The Brothers Size" by McCraney. In a car repair shop in the Louisiana bayou, Ogun Size is a hard-working mechanic and his brother, Oshoosi, is just out of jail. The Size boys clash in this comic and emotional play about the bond between brothers.

Also: "Sister's Christmas Catechism" will be back as a special holiday engagement.

Subscription packages for City Theatre's 2008-09 season go on sale Thursday at the box office or 412-431-2489. Six-play prices range from $90-$246 if purchased before June 1; after that, $96-$252.