16
Celebrity Chef Peter Hardy!

Peter Hardy is not only the founder and current artistic director of Essential Theatre. He is a prolific writer as well: he penned the first plays Essential produced that were by a Georgia playwright, which were produced in 1991, WANDERING DESIRES and IF I SHOULD DIE BEFORE I WAKE, as well as several others throughout the years: MYSTERIOUS CONNECTIONS (photo below by Nancy Johnson, 2013 Essential Theatre Play Festival) was one of ten plays chosen out of more than a thousand applicants for the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference,

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17
Katie Grant Shalin

From SWIMMING WITH JELLYFISH:
“I used to come home and your mother, she would be so happy, like she was waiting all day for the moment I walked through the door….And we would laugh and laugh. I mean there is nothing better than laughing with your mother. And we would sit on the living room floor eating pizza out of a box. It was sloppy and unfocused…but it was brilliant.”
“What happens now? What happens now is that I stay. I stay and try to find my way back to the pizza in the box.”

FIND YOUR WAY TO THE PIZZA WITH US WEDNESDAY NIGHT AT UNCLE MADDIO’S TOCO HILLS!

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THIS WEDNESDAY, December 10, join “Celebrity Chefs” Peter Hardy and Matthew Myers, along with the rest of the Essential Theatre, at Uncle Maddio’s Pizza (Toco Hills) from 5-9pm. Great food, good friends, and all in support of a cause you love!

You can come by just for supper, or you can enjoy any of a number of festive goings-on we have planned:

• The first 50 Essential diners will get 2 free vouchers good for any 2014-15 Hawks home game*
• Free raffle! Winners drawn hourly, plus one big winner drawn at the end of the night.

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18
Bill Gibson

Most recently seen on Essential’s stage: CHRIST AMERICA, part of the 2013 Bare Essentials Play Reading Series

Q: When did you first start writing plays?
A: In 1994 I attended a play workshop at Emory and then joined the Southeast Playwright’s Project. My first play was produced in 1996 and my first full-length, WARTS, won the Essential Theatre Playwriting Award in 2002. Since then I have had about 20 plays produced in Atlanta, New York and elsewhere. (For a full interview from his reading this summer:https://essentialtheatre.com/meet-the-playwright-bill-g…/)

We are proud to support Bill’s work.

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19
Daryl Fazio

Although producing new plays is the primary focus of Essential’s work to support Georgia playwrights, play readings are also a vital part of the play development process, and we do host play readings as well.

Daryl Fazio, who has performed on our stage and designed much of the graphic art you’ve seen associated with our festivals the past couple of years, is also an accomplished Georgia playwright. Last spring, her play SPLIT IN THREE, which you may remember from Essential’s own 2012 Bare Essentials Play Reading Series, was read as part of Florida Repertory’s first annual PlayLab Festival —

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20
Valetta Anderson

LEAVING LIMBO, which we premiered in 2006, was an excellent example of how you can learn about a script from your audiences. Night after night, people would leave to go to the bathroom during one particularly long scene, which told us we were losing their attention with that scene. Producing new plays is an absolutely vital part of the play development process: you can’t predict audience reactions in a vacuum!

“Without that Essential production, LEAVING LIMBO would be as unrealized a a pre-digital-era photograph lnguishing on a developed but not-printed roll of film.”

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21
Fleck, Wurl, McQueen & Co

“no restrictions as to style, length or subject matter” you say?
As a matter of fact, yes: although traditionally our Award winners have been full-length plays (running an hour or more in performance), in 2007 Essential produced NIGHT TRAVELS. This was the first time that we “created” a show, by taking short works by several authors and putting them together to form a whole, including one section that was created in an ensemble effort by the director and the cast.

Artistic Director Peter Hardy said, “I first got the idea to put these pieces (all of them about women’s dreams) together into one evening around 1994.

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22
Topher Payne

You know him for his recent prolific writings: the Lakebottoms (Proper and Prime), Angry Fags, Swell Party and more, to include his 2012 Essential premiere, Evelyn in Purgatory.

Or maybe you know him because you’ve seen him onstage, or because of the column he’s written for years.

Regardless of HOW you know him, it’s likely that, in some capacity, you DO know him. So for today’s post, here’s a “baby picture” of one of Atlanta’s favorite playwrights and personalities, Topher Payne, who has appeared on Essential’s stage many times over the years but was first cast in our 2001 production of Lauren Gunderson’s PARTS THEY CALL DEEP.

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23
Bill Gibson

Bill’s play, WARTS, was the winner of the 2002 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award.

WARTS was set in 1950s Philadelphia (the boyhood home of writer Bill Gibson), and it established the rule that, while only Georgia resident playwrights could be submitted to Essential’s contest, the plays themselves did not have to be set in Georgia, or even in the south.

DID YOU KNOW?
2002 was the first year we specifically articulated our mission of supporting Georgia playwrights. Since the first Essential Play Festival in 1999, however, we have presented 23 new works by Georgia playwrights,

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24
Theroun Patterson

Just this past summer, Theroun’s THAT UGANDA PLAY was co-winner of the Essential Theatre Playwriting Award and was produced in our Festival. Inspired by an interview between Rachel Maddow and David Bahati, the Ugandan Parliament member who proposed the notorious Anti-Gay bill that year in Uganda, Theround began writing this play in 2010 and developed it with Working Title Playwrights and Academy Theatre over the next couple of years. THAT UGANDA PLAY became newly relevant this year with the passing of a version of the bill whose proposal inspired the play.

We are proud to have supported Theroun’s work.

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