Atlanta playwright Gabriel Jason Dean, winner of the 2010 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award for his play QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT, has won the 2011 Ken Ludwig Playwriting Scholarship, given out each year as part of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival for the body of work of a student playwright. QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT was one of the plays he was honored for. The Essential Theatre congratulates Gabriel for another step in what’s sure to be a great career!

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“Assume nothing. Notice everything. Make something… happen.” Playwright of Night Blooms, Margaret Baldwin, shares her creative process while dealing with questions about race, identity and human rights.”

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April 23 (Shakespeare’s Birthday) was the submission deadline for the 2012 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award competition.  This will be the tenth year for this annual contest – the only one of its kind, exclusively dedicated to the work of Georgia playwrights.  The winning play has always received a cash prize (which started out at $300, and has now gone up to $600) and a full production as part of the Essential Theatre’s annual Festival of World Premieres and Regional Premieres, plays that have never been seen in Georgia before.  We’re proud of our long tradition of supporting, developing and producing the work of Georgia writers.

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When I first started reading Melanie Marnich’s A SLEEPING COUNTRY, I knew that we were looking for a comedy to help round out the 2011 Essential Theatre Play Festival – or, at least, something lighter than the two fairly heavy dramas we had already decided to do (Lee Blessing’s GREAT FALLS and Theroun D’Arcy Patterson’s A THOUSAND CIRCLETS).  Right from the start I was pleased with how funny A For the past thirteen years, we’ve been choosing plays to present in the Essential Theatre’s annual three-show Festival.  All we do are World Premieres and Regional Premieres, bringing Atlanta what’s new. 

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I’ve been a fan of Lee Blessing’s writing for a long time. When I saw the Essential Theatre’s production of his play, “Down the Road”, back in 1994, I told Peter Hardy (who directed it) that it was a play that disturbed women in ways they wanted to think about and disturbed men in ways they didn’t want to think about. Blessing’s plays tend to stir things up and make you think about stuff you feel, but don’t usually look at.

“Great Falls” stirs up the mysteries between love and fear, men and women,

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Peter Hardy, Artistic Director

When I first started reading Melanie Marnich’s A SLEEPING COUNTRY, I knew that we were looking for a comedy to help round out the 2011 Essential Theatre Play Festival – or, at least, something lighter than the two fairly heavy dramas we had already decided to do (Lee Blessing’s GREAT FALLS and Theroun D’Arcy Patterson’s A THOUSAND CIRCLETS).  Right from the start I was pleased with how funny A SLEEPING COUNTRY was, even while it dealt with some serious subject matter (a woman who may be in danger of dying from insomnia).  It had a magical,

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If you are anything like me, you wait until the last minute to decide when to see a theatre production and expect to find a discount ticket as well. We’ve figured out a way to offer just that. Essential Theatre’s new Flex Pass gives you flexibility and discounted ticket prices while helping us raise funds before the summer festival opens. What’s more, the earlier you purchase, the larger the ticket package, the greater your savings will be. Each week as the festival opening approaches, these packages will cost just a tiny bit more. Just a small twist of the arm so that you might please consider buying your tickets now.

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And yet another new opening for Essential Theatre playwright Lauren Gunderson: SILENT SKY at South Coast Repertory in California:

“She stared at the heavens, and what she saw there changed the course of astronomy. But when Henrietta Leavitt arrives at the Harvard Observatory in the early 1900s, she isn’t allowed to touch a telescope or even express an idea. Instead, she joins a group of women “computers,” charting the stars for an astronomer who calculates projects in “girl hours” and has no time for Henrietta’s probing theories. But as she measures the light of distant stars,

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Essential Theatre playwright Karla Jennings (we produced the World Premiere of her play IMAGES IN SMOKE in 2000) has a new play that will be opening up Northern Kentucky University’s Y.E.S. Festival on April 7. MONSTROUS BEAUTY is about the Teutonic drama queen and saint of Nazi kitsch, Leni Riefenstahl, one of the scariest artists of our time, who surged from dancer to Third Reich Uberfrauline to prisoner to American cultural icon. Co-starring Marlene Dietrich as the good twin, the play explores the labyrinth of personal morality and America’s disturbing embrace of an exceptionally disturbing artist.
Congratulations to Karla!

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For information on 2011 Essential Theatre Festival, check out www.EssentialTheatre.com. For questions regarding internship and employment opportunities, contact production manager Jennifer Brown at [email protected].

Internships

Internships for all positions are now available for Essential Theatre’s 2011 New Play Festival! Opportunities are available in marketing, fundraising, all areas of design production, and running crew. Customizable internships are also available upon request. Contact production manager Jennifer Brown at [email protected]. Please send a resume if you have one, and indicate your area of interest. Please also list your general availability between May and July,

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