Your Input is Essential

We’re about to start rehearsals for this summer’s 2010 Essential Theatre Play Festival, and we’ve got lots of plans for marketing and reaching out to new audiences – but we can always use some new ideas. Here’s a rundown of some of the angles, story elements and subject matter that we’re dealing with this summer, and I’d like to know if anyone has suggestions about ways we might leverage these to reach out to particular groups, organizations or audience segments (with offers for group sales, or cross promotion, or whatever!). We’d also be interested in arranging for talkback sessions, etc.

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Great Things are Happening for Essential Theatre Playwrights

Lots of great things are happening for Essential Theatre playwrights. Our friend Karla Jennings recently won the 2010 John Gassner Award for her play MONSTROUS BEAUTY, a riff on the life and times of the notorious Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. This national prize was initiated in 1967 to recognize outstanding new work by American writers. Her play will receive a cash prize and a staged reading in New York City.

Karla was one of the first Georgia playwrights whose work we produced – back in 2000, when our production of her play IMAGES IN SMOKE was named one of the best 15 shows of the year by Creative Loafing.

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New Honors for Playwright Gabriel Jason Dean

I thought you guys would appreciate knowing this. One of my short plays, PigSkin, was accepted to the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival this summer in July. YAY! The week before QOS opens.

Then, as if that wasn’t enough good news, I got offered a residency at the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca NY to work on my new play The Freeman Elegies. Then, I’m going to the O’Neill for a week long residency.

I’m feeling pretty darn good today!

Cheers,

~Gabriel Jason Dean

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Essential Theatre Play Development

One of the Essential Theatre’s most important goals has always been the production and encouragement of new plays by Georgia writers. Ever since our first annual Festival in 1999, we’ve been committed to the production of at least one World Premiere a year by a Georgia playwright, which led us to institute the annual Essential Theatre Playwriting Award, the only such competition exclusively dedicated to new works by writers from this state.

Along with producing fourteen World Premieres since then, we’ve done some work developing new plays, holding private and public readings and offering consultation to playwrights.

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For Playwrights, a Reminder

The submission deadline is coming up for the 2011 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award competition. Unproduced plays by Georgia playwrights are eligible; there are no restrictions as to style, subject matter or length (though preference is given to plays with a running time of at least an hour). The winning playwright will receive a cash prize of $600, and the play will be given a full production as part of the 2011 Essential Theatre Play Festival.

The script submission deadline is April 23, 2010.

Submissions for the 2011 festival can be e-mailed to [email protected] in pdf or MSWord format or sent by regular mail to the address below.

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Thank You IHG Hotel Indigo

Essential Theatre is grateful to support from the International Hotel Group and Atlanta Hotel Indigo in their support for the 2010 Essential Theatre Play Festival. Ms. Rita Dove, “Darker Face of the Earth” playwright, and Pulitzer prize winning US Poet Laura will attend our opening festival.

A big thank you to the International Hotel Group for their support. Please visit their website to learn more.

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Advice to Playwrights Starting Out

Some of this advice was given to me over the years by smart people, but I don’t really remember who said what, so you should just do it. It’s good advice, most of it. There are other things to do too, probably. Also, this is advice for starting out. You might do different things after you playwright a while. Remember that everyone has their own path. These might not all be helpful for you. So find what works for you. Good luck! ~ Adam Szymkowicz

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