Essential Theatre brings back the 24 Hour Play Festival this January, in partnership with Decatur Arts Alliance and Core Dance

December 2023 – Essential Theatre hits the ground running for their 25th Anniversary season on January 5-6, 2024 with the first annual Southern  Fried Bake-Off, a 24 Hour play festival where playwrights, actors, and crew come together at Core Dance in downtown Decatur for an exhilarating 24 hours to write, rehearse, and perform brand new plays based on a Bake-Off theme and a list of “ingredients.”

“What better way to kick off the new year than getting together with people we like to do something we enjoy,

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ATLANTA – July 2021

Essential Theatre, Inc has been awarded two grants by Georgia Council for the Arts (GCA), a division of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, as part of GCA’s initial disbursement of grants for fiscal year 2022. A total of 218 organizations were awarded 266 grants that provide more than $2 million in funding to arts organizations throughout the state. The Bridge Grant provided funding for operating support to 135 organizations, the Project Grant will help fund 54 arts projects, and the Arts Education Program Grant was awarded to 77 organizations. Additional grants for Vibrant Communities and Cultural Facilities programs will be awarded in the Fall of 2021.

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Essential Theatre announces the winners of the 2020 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award
 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jennifer Kimball, Managing Director
[email protected]

2020 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award Winners press kit

February 2020 – Essential Theatre is proud to announce the winners of the 2020 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award: The Outrage Machine by Daniel Carter Brown and The Wishing Place by Beverly Trader Austin. The Outrage Machine and The Wishing Place will each receive a full production in the 2020 Essential Theatre Festival this summer as well as a cash prize.

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And the winner is…
Essential Theatre announces the winners of the 2018 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award

February 2018 – Essential Theatre is proud to announce there are two winners of the 2018 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award: Rachel Graf Evans’ Built to Float and Avery Sharpe’s Woke.

Built to Float and Woke will both receive a full production in the 2018 Essential Theatre Festival this summer as well as a cash prize.

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ADA pr photos

The Essential Theatre’s East Coast Premiere of Lauren Gunderson’s ADA AND THE MEMORY ENGINE will open the 2017 Essential Theatre Play Festival on Friday, July 28 at 8 p.m.   There will be another performance on Saturday at 8 p.m.

This beautiful and dazzling play is based on the life of Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron and a visionary mathematical genius who, in the first half of the 19th Century, became the world’s first computer programmer.

Essential Theatre produced Lauren’s first play in 2001, when she had just turned 18.

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ANOTHER MOTHER press kit with photos

Join Essential Theatre for the professional world premiere of Another Mother, by Atlanta playwright G. M. Lupo, opening August 4.

Winner of the 2017 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award, Another Mother follows the journey of Genevieve as she pieces together the mysterious identities and relationships between her biological mother, her birth mother and the mother who raised her.

Featuring the acting talents of: Rylee Bunton (Genevieve Duchard), Nina Jones (Rosalind Duchard), Kristin Storla (Abigail Worthy), Christine Vozniak (Alyssa Caine), Trey York (Steven Asher,

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ADA AND THE MEMORY ENGINE press kit with photos

July 2017 – Join us for the regional premiere production of Ada and the Memory Engine by Lauren Gunderson, opening July 28.

One of the latest plays penned by our very first Essential Theatre Playwriting Award Winner and the Most Produced Living Playwright in America in 2016, Lauren Gunderson, this play is about the world’s first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace. Described by the Huffington Post as “a rare and special artistic achievement: an intelligent play about intelligent historical people that has been crafted by intelligent theatre artists for an intelligent audience,”

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

2017 ESSENTIAL FESTIVAL press kit with photos

Atlanta, July 2017 – Tickets are now on sale for the 19th Annual Essential Theatre Play Festival, which kicks off in just a few weeks!

This summer, Essential Theatre continues its tradition of premiering the best new work by Georgia playwrights for Atlanta audiences with the 19th Annual Essential Theatre Play Festival. The festival runs July 28 through August 27 at the West End Performing Arts Center, located at 945 Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard.

This summer, audiences will see the World Premiere of Another Mother by G.

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Download press release: And the winner is…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Essential Theatre announces the winner
of the 2017 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award

February 2017 – Essential Theatre is proud to announce the winner of the 2017 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award: G. M. Lupo’s Another Mother.

Another Mother follows the journey of Genevieve as she pieces together the mysterious identities and relationships between her biological mother, her birth mother, and the mother who raised her. “It’s about unintended consequences,” says Lupo, “and how our actions may affect others we know little or nothing about.”

Another Mother will receive a full production in the 2017 Essential Theatre Festival this summer as well as a cash prize.

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DISPOSSESSED // ESSENTIAL THEATRE PLAY FESTIVAL
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE- ATLANTA, GA
downloadable press kit

DISPOSSESSED, written by Karen Wurl:
PROFESSIONAL WORLD PREMIERE

Join us for the professional world premiere of Dispossessed, by Atlanta playwright Karen Wurl, opening July 29.

Dispossessed is a romantic comic-fantasy, set in 1928 New York City, about a Yiddish theater company that is rehearsing the classic play “The Dybbuk” (in which a bride is possessed by the ghostly spirit of her dead true love on the day she is supposed to marry another man). 

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