Sincere thanks to EVERYONE who made a donation to our power2give campaign last month. Together, we raised over $5,000 to support Essential’s play development work through the Essential Theatre Playwriting Award and the Bare Essentials Reading Series and to launch us into this year’s strategic planning.

There’s much for which to be thankful as we embark into 2016, the very first of which are this campaign’s supporters:

Chris Carlsten, Celia Quillian, Katie Taylor, Lenny Pallats, Daniel Guyton,JoAnne Lengyel, Cathy Jamison, Alex Van, Antonia McCain, Sherry Shaw, Paul Donnelly, Steven, the Cantrells, Libby Mickle, Doug Kaye, Mark Perloe,

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Our matching-gift power2give campaign expires in just a few hours, so if you woke up this morning and your first thought was, “Man, I wish I’d had a chance to make that donation to Essential in all the year-end fuss,” you’re in luck!

We’ve already raised quite a bit, and we’ve been blessed with so many talented artists and businesspeople who are willing to donate their talents to support our work. But if you’re interested in getting in on the fun, there’s still time. Donate before midnight and your donation is matched.

As for the goals we set out in our power2give campaign?

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IT’S THE FINAL DAY to see your donation matched through our power2give campaign — don’t wait any longer to make your donation!https://www2.power2give.org/campaigns/210

#1 in our accompanying 20 DAYS OF ESSENTIAL PLAYS is LILLIAN LIKES IT, winner of the 2015 Essential Playwriting Award, written by Joshua Mikel and produced in this past summer’s Festival.

“Getting a piece through Essential has become sort of a rite of passage for the GA playwright I think,” said Mikel in an interview before LILLIAN LIKES IT opened this past August, “It’s an amazing and necessary thing to have a company that pulls from the local talent here,

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TWO DAYS LEFT to see your donation matched through our power2give campaign — donate today!https://www2.power2give.org/campaigns/210

#2 in our accompanying 20 DAYS OF ESSENTIAL PLAYS is STRAY DOGS by actor-turned-playwright Matthew Myers, which won the 2013 Playwriting Award and was produced in the 2013 Festival.

Myers first came to Essential as an actor in 2010, then contributed a couple of pieces to THE LOCAL in 2012, and the following year STRAY DOGS premiered as part of teh 2013 Essential Play Festival.

DID YOU KNOW? More characters were killed off in STRAY DOGS than in any show Essential has ever done – except BAT-HAMLET,

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ONLY THREE DAYS LEFT to see your donation matched through our power2give campaign — donate today!https://www2.power2give.org/campaigns/210

#3 in our accompanying 20 DAYS OF ESSENTIAL PLAYS is ONLY CHILDREN by Karen Wurl, which was produced in our first festival in 1999, two years before the creation of the Essential Theatre Playwriting Award.

Wurl went on to write MISS MACBETH, which won the Essential Playwriting Award in 2005 and has gone on to multiple successful productions since that time. She also wrote a very popular segment from NIGHT TRAVELS, which was produced in our 2007 Festival.

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Only 4 days left to see your donation matched through our power2give campaign — donate today! https://www2.power2give.org/campaigns/210

#4 in our accompanying 20 DAYS OF ESSENTIAL PLAYWRIGHTS is ALL OF OUR BARE ESSENTIALS PLAYS. Although not officially branded as “Bare Essentials” until 2013, Essential has presented public readings for more than ten years of our history. Here’s the full list. How many plays or playwrights from this list do you recognize?

Essential Artistic Director Peter Hardy, a playwright himself, shares some insight into how Essential helps playwrights make the most of these readings, and why:

“A great deal of care goes into the selection of the actors for these readings,”

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Thank you for taking our stakeholder survey! Your input is a vital part of the conversation as we are building our strategic plan for the next few years.

Please follow the links below to the survey group with which you most closely identify. If you identify with more than one of the groups, you can take more than one of the surveys. Each survey should take 5-10 minutes to complete. At the end of the survey, you’ll have the opportunity to enter your email address if you’d like to be contacted for further comment. You will have an opportunity at the end of the survey to volunteer to be contacted for follow-up questions,

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5 DAYS LEFT to see your donation matched through our power2give campaign: https://www2.power2give.org/campaigns/210

#5 in our accompanying 20 DAYS OF ESSENTIAL PLAYWRIGHTS is CHARM SCHOOL by Larry Larson and Eddie Levi Lee. CHARM SCHOOL was the 2006 Essential Playwriting Award Winner and went on to win the Suzi’s Gene-Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award in 2007 and have multiple successful runs at Horizon Theatre.

Why is producing new plays by Georgia playwrights important?

“Performing before an audience can teach you things about a play. After watching the first few performances,

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6 DAYS LEFT to see your donation matched through our power2give campaign: https://www2.power2give.org/campaigns/210

#6 in our accompanying 20 DAYS OF ESSENTIAL PLAYWRIGHTS is WEST OF EDEN by Letitia Sweitzer, originally produced as part of the 2008 Essential Theatre Festival.

This play grew from a one-act that won the 2005 Georgia Theatre Conference’s One-Act Competition, into the full-length work produced by Essential in 2008. In the interim, Essential hosted a couple of private readings of different versions of the play and was considering producing a public staged reading, but by the time of the second private reading,

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7 DAYS LEFT to see your donation matched through our power2give campaign: https://www2.power2give.org/campaigns/210

#7 in our accompanying 20 DAYS OF ESSENTIAL PLAYWRIGHTS is IMAGES IN SMOKE by Karla Jennings, originally produced as part of the 2000 Essential Theatre Festival. Named one of the year’s best productions by Creative Loafing, IMAGES IN SMOKE was the first play by Jennings that Essential produced. It took place before the Playwriting Competition had been created, but in 2014 she did win the Playwriting Award with another play, RAVENS AND SEAGULLS, which was produced in that summer’s festival.

“Essential’s faith in playwrights strengthens their faith in themselves,”

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