Opening the Festival on August 9 will be The Other Part of the Picture, a comic drama about a group of students who find a mysterious batch of old letters in the house two of them are living in. Written by Essential’s Founding Artistic Director Peter Hardy, it’s won playwriting prizes from the New York Script Awards and the Best Script Awards – London. It was also chosen for the Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival, where it was given a staged reading. This will be the play’s World Premiere production.

Audience Advisories: Adult language and sexual situations

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A comic drama about the growing friendship between two very different college students working together in the lobby of a 1970s movie theatre in a southern university town. Written by artistic director Peter Hardy. Winner of a New Southern Theatre Festival Playwriting Award.

“One of the year’s best shows” -Sunday Paper & Atlanta Theatre Buzz

“Best Atlanta Playwright” -Creative Loafing

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Mysterious Connections, written by Peter Hardy and directed by Ellen McQueen, is a fantasy based around two women who grow close and eventually find themselves able to enter each other’s dreams.

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