Lee Raines (left) wrote the final Bare Essentials reading in our Festival series, Rick and Ricky. Read on to learn a little more about Lee and the play we’ll be seeing tomorrow night!

Tell us a little about yourself.
I grew up in the suburbs, of Washington DC. In 1977, a year after graduating from the Univ. of MD, I moved to New York City, and worked in the theater as a performer for about 15 years and then took a corporate marketing job at Time Inc., where I worked for over 20 years, managing to keep active in various theater projects. Since retiring from Time Inc., I’ve thrown myself into playwriting and have returned to my first love, the theater.
Over the last several years I’ve been living in Philadelphia and Atlanta. On my first move to Atlanta (2011-2013) I joined Working Title Playwrights and then re-joined when I returned in 2015.
My Georgia roots run deep. My Mom, Dad, and entire extended family hails from Turner County in central South Georgia. Some readers might be familiar with a giant peanut by the I-75. That’s Turner County. Currently, my husband Drew and I live in Tyrone, GA, where we are raising our teenage niece, Meredith.

Please share in your own words a little about the play we’ll be seeing.
The play is a comic love story set in New York City during the onset of the AIDS crisis. Rick and Ricky are completely infatuated with each other but soon realize they don’t agree on anything. They break up, but remain close friends. The AIDS crisis disrupts their lives and intensifies their relationship, testing the limits of their love.

What inspired you to write this play?
The character of Ricky is based on a real person, Ricky Varetta, who died in 1985 due to complications from AIDS. He was an astonishing, unforgettable person, especially his deep belief in the power of forgiveness. I’m a long-term survivor, and having lived through the AIDS crisis in New York City in the 1980s, I feel an urgency to tell the stories of what I experienced.

What is the importance of staged readings in your own creative process and the development of your play?
I can’t imagine writing a play without staged readings, especially a comedy. Audiences tell you the truth. Which means I’ll hear the jokes that don’t land, (painful!) or parts where the story starts to sag or gets confusing. When the words are still on the page, playwrighting can be deceptive – everything makes sense to me. When an audience is reacting in real-time, hearing the words, it’s a healthy dose of reality.

What do you hope to get out of this Bare Essentials reading process?
I’ve heard most of the scenes in the first half of the play in front of a live audiences during Monday Night Critique Sessions at WTP, and have rewritten much of the play based on the feedback. But this is the first time I’ll hear the entire piece, the first time actually working with a director and actors – it’s a whole new level in the process. The play is at the right point for a reading. I need to find out if and where the train falls off the tracks.

What has your experience with this reading been so far?
Being chosen for the Bare Essentials reading series is thrilling and terrifying. I love the encouragement, who wouldn’t, but everything suddenly became real. I haven’t had a rehearsal yet, but meeting with Ryan and Amber, discussing the script, and the pressure of a reading has already sharpened and intensified my writing.

Where else can we see your work, recently, currently or in the near future?
I wrote and produced a benefit for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS at the Laurie Beechman Theatre in NYC last March. The show sold out, raised a lot of money and there were two idols of mine, Chita Rivera and Moises Kaufmann, in the audience. I’m developing material from that show. I also performed in another BC/EFA benefit, the Easter Bonnet Competition at the Minskoff Theatre last April, fulfilling a life-long dream to dance on Broadway.

I’m also putting the final touches on a one act comedy that takes place in a church parking lot. The working title is “Church Parking Lot”.

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Rick and Ricky will be read at the West End Performing Arts Center on Wednesday,  August 23, at 7:30pm. Directed by Ryan Oliveti. All readings are free and open to the public, donations gladly accepted.

Festival Bare Essentials readings are produced in partnership with Working Title Playwrights, and playwrights whose work is featured in a Festival Bare Essentials reading also receive a complimentary one-year membership to Working Title Playwrights.

Paul Donnelly (right) wrote the play we’ll be reading tonight, Falling Off the Edge.

Tell us a little about yourself.
I was born in Brooklyn, NY.  Grew up and spent most of my life in Washington, DC and the Virginia suburbs.  Spent eight years in Atlanta and just relocated to Honolulu in June with my husband, Frank Wong, our two dogs and three cats.

I’ve been writing plays since the snazziest technology available was an IBM Selectric.  The high points have been two Helen Hayes Award nominations, seeing an actor in one of those shows actually win a Helen Hayes Award, and my association with Working Title Playwrights.

Please share in your own words a little about the play we’ll be seeing.
This play has been a real journey for me as well as for Carly, Belinda, and Matt. {SPOILER ALERT} There exist drafts in which Carly accepts the proposal.  There is a one act that depicts the death of Matt’s parents exactly as he describes it. I am clearly drawn to the conventions of the rom-com, but I had to follow Carly where she led me and to honor her truth.  I think I finally have.

What inspired you to write this play?
Almost everything I write starts from a character who intrigues or inspires me. Or who just moves into my head and just won’t leave me alone until I tell her or his story.

What is the importance of staged readings in your own creative process and the development of your play?
Staged readings and the rehearsals for them give me the opportunity to hear for myself what isn’t working, what’s missing, and what’s just too much.  This one has been an especial gift for the remarkable cast and especially reinforcing as Carolyn Cook seemed to find everything I had hoped I’d put in the script.

What do you hope to get out of this Bare Essentials reading process?
In addition to the things I can only learn about a script from hearing it read, I’m honored to be a part of the Bare Essentials series, having been a fan for years. I’m pleased that a slightly wider audience will see this play, every scene of which has been read in a Working Title Playwrights Monday Night Critique Session.

What has your experience with this reading been so far? How is this experience, now that you’ve relocated, different from previous readings of your works around town?
Y’know, other than not being able to be in the house for the reading itself, this hasn’t been that different.  I was fortunate to be able to be Skyped into the rehearsal so I have felt very present and engaged.  This cast is so extraordinary that there were moments in the last scene that their work in the rehearsal moved me so much it didn’t feel like I was hearing something I had written.  Which is absolutely the goal! That can be the gift of writing for the theater, when actors take my typing and make so much more of it.

Where else can we see your work, recently, currently or in the near future?
Working Title did a really lovely First Light reading of [Shakespeare reference] a little over a year ago.  That script was a less far along and I learned a great deal from the questions people asked in the discussion afterward.  Audiences aren’t very helpful when they offer solutions, but they are always right when they are confused or bored.
I am delighted to say that Onion Man Productions will be producing Falling Off the Edge in January and that I hope to be back in Atlanta for at least part of the run.

Is there anything else that you’d like to add?
I once danced with Kathleen Turner.

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Falling Off the Edge will be read at the West End Performing Arts Center on Wednesday, August 9 at 7:30pm. Directed by Carolyn Cook. All readings are free and open to the public, donations gladly accepted.

Festival Bare Essentials readings are produced in partnership with Working Title Playwrights, and playwrights whose work is featured in a Festival Bare Essentials reading also receive a complimentary one-year membership to Working Title Playwrights.

Click here to read a summary or listen to the broadcast of Essential Theatre’s most recent City Lights appearance. Thanks to Lois, Myke and the WABE team for your dedicated coverage of arts and theatre in Atlanta, including the Essential Theatre Festival!

Anna Denise Millard (left) wrote the play we’ll be reading tonight, What My Mother Told Me.

Tell us a little about yourself.
After graduating from Emory University with a degree in Playwriting, I have spent the first few years of my career working in publishing in New York City, as an Assistant Editor with Oxford University Press and the Speakers Bureau Director for the Hachette Book Group. I’ve recently decided to shift paths, starting a new journey focused on pursuing artistic endeavors and working in hospitality. I live in Bushwick, Brooklyn where I collaborate on podcasts, help produce low-budget webseries(es?), guest write for blogs, give bad advice over mezcal, and am on a first-name basis with three different Halal cart guys.

Please share in your own words a little about the play we’ll be seeing.
What My Mother Told Me is a play I wrote about three years ago at the end of my time at Emory. I have been wanting to revisit it and make some substantial changes for a while now, so this reading comes at a great time!

What inspired you to write this play?
A lot of what inspired me to write this play was my own experiences growing up in Nashville, Tennessee and observing generations of women whose lives were deeply affected on every level by their ideas about womanhood, gender, and sexuality. Growing up, I felt women were so shaped by the things they couldn’t talk about.

What is the importance of staged readings in your own creative process and the development of your play?
I think readings are absolutely critical to the development of any play. Writing can be such an isolating experience, but theater is a completely collaborative art. Readings are where the intellectual work of putting ideas into words and the physical work of creating a performance–turning those words into theater–collide.

What do you hope to get out of this Bare Essentials reading process?
I put this play aside for a few years; I knew there were elements I was unsatisfied with but was too close to the project to be able to really dig in and make changes. Now that there has been some breathing room, this reading is a perfect chance to revisit and get fresh perspective on how to move forward!

What has your experience with this reading been so far?
Since I live in New York, we’ve been working together remotely and mostly over email. Since I haven’t been to any rehearsals most of the details are going to be a surprise! I’m excited.

Where else can we see your work, either recently, currently or in the near future?
Right now I’m in the process of launching a website for a podcast and short film I’m producing as tangent projects …. unfortunately the details of the site’s domain are still in the works but please reach out directly for more information!

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What My Mother Told Me, by Anna Denise Millard, will be read tonight at 7:30pm at the West End Performing Arts Center, 945 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd. Featuring: Lane Carlock, John Benzinger, Brooke Owens, Annie Cook, Allan Edwards, Tad Cameron, Kristin Butler and Kyra Cohen. Directed by Anna G. Richardson

As always, the reading is free and open to the public.
Discussion with the playwright will follow the reading.