The August 22 Bare Essentials Play Reading is Shark Week by Anneka Rose. Read on to learn a little more about the playwright and the play we’ll be seeing Wednesday night!
Anneka Rose, a Los Angeles native, is a recent alum from Emory University, graduating with a degree in playwriting with high honors. Her work usually has underlying or very obvious ties to female rage, focusing on young female protagonists using anger as a catalyst for change. Theater is a space for Anneka to scream, vent, and cry about the current state of our world. She has been featured multiple times at Emory as a student playwright and received high honors on her undergraduate thesis, an art historical full-length play.
ET: Hi Anneka, what can you tell us about the play we’ll be hearing Monday night?
AR: SHARK WEEK is a rage play. We follow the new boarding student, Frankie, as she attempts to find connections as she and her peers literally live on their high school campus. The play explores the tragedy of high school hook ups and how those events that we often shrug off as teenage angst can affect girls as they transition into womanhood.
ET: Where did you get the idea for this play? What made you want to write it?
AR: SHARK WEEK is based on my experiences attending boarding school for high school. It was an occurring joke that when all the boarding girls’ menstruation cycles sync up, we’d refer to it as “shark week”. I wrote this play at the height of COVID while quarantining in a two bedroom apartment with four men. Let’s just say I had a lot to be angry about.
ET: How did you get into playwriting?
AR: I’ve been writing stories since I was a kid. Writing has always been my outlet and therapy. I’ve written songs, poetry, short stories, you name it. I didn’t write my first play until my sophomore year at Emory for a mentorship program. It all just clicked. My love for theater and my love for writing merged and I was finally able to create these worlds, people, and stories in a space that I truly understand.
ET: What do you hope to gain from this Bare Essentials experience?
AR: If I’m being honest, I haven’t thought about this play in a while. The Anneka that wrote SHARK WEEK is a completely different person from who I am today. I have not looked at the script for over a year, so I hope it’s like I’m hearing it for the first time. Now that I’ve had distance from this piece, I’m looking forward to truly scrutinize my own work and see how far I’ve come as a writer and person.
ET: Where else can we see your work, either recently, currently, or in the coming years?
AR: I always post announcements and share what I’m working on on my instagram! @anneka.rose
Shark Week, by Anneka Rose, will take place in person at the West End Performing Arts Center at 7:30pm on Monday August 22. Reserve your free ticket at EssentialTheatre.Tix.com
All readings in the Bare Essentials series are free and open to the public thanks to support from Georgia Humanities, in partnership with the Georgia Department of Economic Development, through funding from the Georgia General Assembly. Funding for this program is also provided by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. This series is curated by Essential’s founding Artistic Director, Peter Hardy.
