Sitcom legend David Schwimmer and the cast (pictured above) of his directorial debut play Fault Lines will help celebrate the opening weekend of 92YTribeca on Sunday, October 19. Schwimmer will be on hand with playwright Stephen Belber, artistic director Geoffrey Nauffts and castmembers Josh Lucas, Noah Emmerich, Dominic Fumusa and Jennifer Mudge for a discussion of the hit off-Broadway play. Here’s what Times theater critic Jason Zinoman had to say about Fault Lines:

Dude. It’s an important word in the lexicon of the average, beer-swilling American male, employed frequently as a term of endearment, exclamation (Duuuude!) or even informal title (First Dude). So when Bill (Josh Lucas), a graphic designer who has settled down in a life of marriage and nightly episodes of “Charlie Rose,” tells his old friend Jim (Dominic Fumusa), still single and sleeping around, to stop calling him “dude,” it feels like a harsh break-up. Looking shocked and even a bit hurt, Jim replies exasperatedly, “You don’t see yourself as a dude?”

Stephen Belber’s enjoyable if flawed “Fault Lines” is part of a genre — call it Dude Plays — about vaguely homoerotic male friendship in which the towel-slapping banter usually hides much deeper divides. One of the best examples in the last decade was Mr. Belber’s own breakthrough “Tape,” which shares a twisty plot about a reunion, themes of deception and moral responsibility and a dispute about a sexual incident long ago. The excellent Mr. Fumusa also starred in that play’s 2002 premiere by the Naked Angels theater company, which has produced this play as well.