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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The first weekend in May, Florida Rep held their first ever PlayLab Festival, “an intensive festival that showcases New Plays and New Voices in the American Theatre, and gives playwrights a safe environment to workshop their plays.” Out of approximately 100 plays considered for the festival, only four were chosen to be read. One of these was Daryl Fazio’s Split in Three, which Essential audiences may remember from the 2012 Bare Essentials series. Congratulations, Daryl!

A major goal of the PlayLab Festival, as with Essential’s own Bare Essentials Reading Series, is to give playwrights a chance to hear their words read aloud and receive feedback from cast and audience alike.

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Our new website is live, and it’s all thanks to our awesome supporters who helped us to fund it!

We hope you find the new website useful and informative. Here are some things you may want to check out:

• The Upcoming 2014 Festival
• How to find us in our NEW location
• Our Wonderful Sponsors
• How to get involved with Essential Theatre
• The Playwriting Competition
• Recent News
• A full catalog of our Past Productions (coming in the Fall)

Tremendous thanks to our New Website supporters: Jessica Fern Hunt,

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The Academy Theatre’s been up to some pretty exciting things since their move from Avondale Estates last year. With two new homes, one in Stockbridge and one in Hapeville, the iconic Atlanta theater is growing so fast it makes your head spin.

This weekend, they’re hosting a long-time Essential family member, Brenda Porter, as she performs the one-woman show, Pathways, written by Shirlene Holmes. Pathways takes audiences on a journey through the lives of some of the most engaging, dynamic and successful African American women in our history, women who have often been overlooked or marginalized by history text books.

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This weekend, “discover ‘nearly new’ work by living writers, performed by some of Atlanta’s hottest directors and actors in dialogue with amazing writers, producers and theater makers from Haiti, Quebec, Belgium, France, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago and Los Angeles! Celebrate the voices of women and youth through plays, graphic novels, and readings from and about the French-Speaking World. Shine a light on contemporary issues like bullying behavior, our obsession with Facebook, our litigious society and mothers and daughters.”
-nearlynewfestival.brownpapertickets.com

Meet Park Krausen,

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Longtime Essential Theatre director Ellen McQueen was one of the three artists chosen by the Alliance Theatre for the first Atlanta Artist’s Lab (AAL) program, through which she will be able to further develop The Projects Project, a multi-media theatre piece about the experience of people growing up in Atlanta’s housing projects. The Projects Project began as part of the 2012 Essential production of The Local, a collaborative theater project about the City of Atlanta, developed and directed by McQueen, a citywide portrait of Atlanta that Ellen conceived and directed,

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Tonight at 7pm in the Schwartz Center at Emory, former Essential Theatre collaborator Patricia Henritze’s play, The Bitch of Balaclava, is being read as part of Theater Emory’s Brave New Works series.

Brave New Works is a festival of new play readings and exploratory workshops presented by the Playwriting Center of Theater Emory. Playwrights, adaptors, composers, and dramaturgs come together towork on these plays in development, with a combined company of student and professional actors.
I had the opportunity to connect with Patricia earlier this week and hear about her experience with Brave New Works, learn a little about tonight’s play,

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ESSENTIAL THEATRE ANNOUNCES TWO WINNERS FOR THE 2014 PLAYWRITING CONTEST

Atlanta, January 2014 – Essential Theatre has just announced Theroun Patterson and Karla Jennings as co-winners of the 2014 Playwriting Competition.  “It’s taken us a long while to come to a decision this year,” observes Peter Hardy, Founding Artistic Director of the theatre, “because of the large number of strong submissions we received.  But we feel that both of these plays are worthy of the prizes and will be excellent contributions to our Festival this summer.” Both playwrights will receive a $600 cash prize and a full production in this summer’s Essential Theatre Festival.

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