FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE- ATLANTA, GA-

That Uganda Play, written by Theroun Patterson, one of the co-winners of the 2014 The Essential Theatre Playwriting Award, is an epic story that moves from America to Africa and back again, imagining the ghosts of war, political corruption and personal betrayal that might lie behind the recent anti-Gay legislation in the nation of Uganda.  Previously, Theroun won the Essential Award back in 2011 for his family drama A Thousand Circlets, which was a big hit in that year’s Essential Theatre Festival.

Since the beginning of the festival in 1999,

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-by Jennifer Kimball, managing director, Essential Theatre

As you are well aware by now, the Essential Theatre Festival is moving to the West End Performing Arts Center this summer. Honestly, it’s not a place I had been aware of before our search for a new home began last fall. But what a treasure it is!

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – ATLANTA, GA –  MAY 27, 2014

Since the beginning of the festival in 1999, The Essential Theatre has committed to producing at least one new play a year by a Georgia playwright. Essential began its annual Essential Theatre Playwriting Competition in 2001, strengthening its ties to local writers by establishing  the only competition exclusively dedicated to playwrights in the state of Georgia. The award for this competition? Production of the play in that year’s Festival and a cash stipend. Now in its 14th year, TheEssential Theatre Playwriting Award co-recipients are Karla Jennings and Theroun Patterson.  

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“Connecting with Deaf Audiences” is Essential’s initiative to reach out to deaf community members and share with them the same great theatre opportunities we’ve been sharing with the hearing members of our community for the past 25 years. This initiative consists of three main elements:

1. One performance of each of the three plays that make up our festival will have sign language interpreters provided by StageHands, the premiere sign language interpreting organization for theatre in Atlanta.
2. Following each signed performance will be a Meet the Playwright talkback which will also have an interpreter, allowing deaf audience members to not only enjoy the performance but also engage with other audience members and the artists involved in the production.

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Essential Theatre is seeking a select few interns for the fall semester. If interested, please
submit a resume and cover letter to the email indicated in the internship description below. To
learn more about Essential Theatre’s mission and work, check out our website and look for us on Facebook. Class credit is available for all internships.
 
Literary Intern
We are looking for up to two literary interns to work with our artistic director to review
submissions to the 2013 Essential Theatre Playwrighting Competition.

We receive over 50 submissions each year,

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We are looking for up to three interns to assist with grant writing and fundraising development during the fall semester. Gain valuable experience finding funding sources and creating grant applications.

Interns will join  the Fundraising Committee’s biweekly meetings and will assist with the tasks that are developed from these meetings. Tasks will primarily consist of researching fundraising opportunities, ensuring that application requirements are met before applications are submitted, identifying new non-grant-based fundraising opportunities and developing and implementing other fundraising ideas. Interns will complete three webinars through the Foundation Center during the semester as well and submit a one-page review of each that includes how the webinar relates to their work with Essential.

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We are grateful for our incredibly talented playwrights, cast, crew, designers and directors without whom this year’s festival would not have been possible. For the first time, we produced three critically acclaimed new plays by Georgia playwrights. We also wish to thank our audience for making this our best festival ever. Watch this brief video to hear what lies ahead for Essential Theatre. 

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The Essential Theatre offers a free ticket (and a complimentary glass of wine) for the July 5 Preview performance of its World Premiere production of Topher Payne’s EVELYN IN PURGATORY, a prize-winning drama about public school teachers.  Topher’s play won the 2012 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award for best play written by a Georgia resident.  Set in the infamous “rubber room” of New York City’s public school system, the playwright describes it as being “like The Breakfast Club for teachers.”

The Preview performance will be at 8 p.m. on July 5 in the Actor’s Express space (located in the King Plow Art Center (http://www.actors-express.com/findus/index.html). 

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As many of you know, THE LOCAL is being produced as one of three world premiere Georgia plays in the Essential Theatre Play Festival, running from July 6th through August 5th at the King Plow Arts Center–tickets are on sale now at essentialtheatre.com. THE LOCAL recently ran a fundraising campaign through KickStarter.com to enable the show to be as beautiful as we were inspired to make it, and I’m happy to say that we have met our goal! So now the production is ready to fly and we want to tell you a little about it. 

THE LOCAL is a collaborative theatre project made of short pieces that is OF Atlanta,

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