-by Peter Hardy

The Essential Theatre’s 2015 General Auditions are coming up this Saturday, which means that for five hours straight we’re going to be seeing actors coming in and doing prepared monolog auditions.  Later on we’ll invite some of those people to read for the two new plays we’ll be producing in this summer’s Essential Festival (Joshua Mikel’s LILLIAN LIKES IT and Natalia Naman’s THE OLD SHIP OF ZION), along with a lot of actors and actresses from around town whose work we’re already familiar with.

Why do we still hold our own annual General Auditions, when most of the companies in town now rely on the Unified General Auditions coming up at the end of March? 

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The Essential Theatre will hold non-union General AudItions for its two-play repertory, the 2015 Essential Theatre Play Festival, to run from July 24-August 23 of 2015. The Festival will feature two new Georgia-written plays, LILLIAN LIKES IT by Joshua Mikel and THE OLD SHIP OF ZION by Natalia Naman. Auditions will be held from 12:30 – 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 14, at the West End Performing Arts Center, located at 945 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd. SW, Atlanta, GA 30310. Free parking is available in the Wells Fargo lot next door. Please bring a headshot/resume and two contrasting monologs that do not run longer than four minutes total.

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Longtime Essential friend and collaborator,  Amber Bradshaw, is premiering her latest work NEXT WEEKEND at 7Stages.

Join Amber Bradshaw and Corian Ellisor in the world premier of Identified: A Queer Variety Show February 26, 27 and 28 at 7Stages Backstage. There will be a mix of dance, theater, drag and burlesque in the innovative performance art piece. Show times are at 8:00 Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Industry night is Saturday at 10:00 pm.

Tickets are found here:
https://www.vendini.com/ticket-software.html?t=tix&e=8c18a5a9b94c94b4adb48e958fa0e72d

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Lauren Gunderson’s Silent Sky, now playing at Theatrical Outfit, is now extended through March 8!

A very fine moment for Theatrical Outfit, and a proud day for Atlanta theatre. Heavenly. Grade A.

-Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Atlanta native Lauren Gunderson’s riveting exploration of the life and career of real-life celebrated astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921) takes us on a humorous, heartwarming and motivating journey as this one-of-a-kind superstar fearlessly asserts herself in the turn-of-the-century world of Harvard’s male-driven observatory, ultimately touching the wondrous outer reaches of our very universe – proof that the human mind and heart truly knows no limits!

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Lauren Gunderson, the very first winner of the Essential Theatre Playwriting Award, is back en force in Atlanta tonight with a staged reading of her play The Revolutionists in Emory University’s Global Voices Spring Staged Reading Series and the first preview of Silent Sky, which officially opens on Saturday, at Theatrical Outfit.

The Revolutionists is a brutal comedic quartet about four very real women who lived boldly in France during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror.  A grand and dream-tweaked comedy about violence and legacy,

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The wonderful words of Topher Payne are now on Amazon.com and on ListenUp. You can now take him with you wherever you go!

Have a Kindle? Topher’s got four different plays and his book Funny Story just waiting for you at Amazon.com

Enjoy audiobooks? The audio version of Funny Story is available through ListenUp and features a cast of Atlanta acotrs: Shelly McCook, Johnny Drago, Jacob York, Amanda Cucher, Jo Howarth, Nicholas Tecosky, Kristin Kalbli and Topher Payne himself! 

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2015 Essential Play Festival Lineup downloadable press kit

Essential Theatre continues its tradition of premiering the best new work by Georgia playwrights for Atlanta audiences with this summer’s Essential Theatre Play Festival, taking place July 24 through August 23 at the West End Performing Arts Center, located at 945 Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard.

The West End Performing Arts Center is an intimate venue nestled in the heart of historic West End, two blocks from I-20 and an easy walk from the West End MARTA station. If you attended last summer’s festival,

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by Parker Hilley

Topher Payne, onstage soon at Steppenwolf next month! Payne’s Angry Fags is presented by Pride Films and Plays as part of the Garage Rep at the renowned Steppenwolf in Chicago. Originally premiered right here in Atlanta at 7Stages Theatre in Little Five Points,  Angry Fags shows what happens when “activism gets angry.” Described as an “Oscar Wilde-meets-‘Fight Club’ fever dream about how good ideas go bad,” the play is a riveting foray into American politics, bomb building, and pistachios. Opening February 20,

Since its inception in 2010,

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-from Artistic Director Peter Hardy

The first Essential Theatre Festival opening in January of 1999, sixteen years ago this month.  Back then, we called it the Festival of New American Theatre, because the name “Essential Theatre” didn’t mean much to anyone yet, and because our mission was to bring American plays to Atlanta that hadn’t been yet been seen in this part of the country. And part of our mission was to annually produce the World Premiere of one new play by a Georgia writer.

In the first few years of the Festival, alongside work by such nationally renowned authors as Paula Vogel,

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