Monday’s Bare Essentials Play Reading is False Awakening by Jacob Ryan Martinez. Read on to learn a little more about the playwright and the play we’ll be seeing on Monday!

Jacob Ryan Martinez is an actor, writer and director originally from San Antonio, Texas. He grew up as the son of a theatre teacher and has been acting since childhood.

Jacob graduated from Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi in 2022 with a B.A. in Acting/Directing through their Honors Program. Shortly after, he moved to Atlanta with his beautiful fiancé and their dog. He has since been collaborating on many projects in theatre,

Continue reading →

This Tuesday’s Bare Essentials Play Reading is The Rock and the Hard Place by Emily McClain. Read on to learn a little more about the playwright and the play we’ll be seeing on Monday!

Emily McClain is a familiar presence to Essential Theatre regulars: her play Slaying Holofernes won the 2019 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award, and in 2020 she co-created and led our community Introduction to Playwriting class, which along with our other playwriting courses she continues to lead to this day.

She keeps busy throughout metro Atlanta as a playwright and theatre educator,

Continue reading →

This Monday’s Bare Essentials Play Reading is Water Boyz by Kwik Jones. Read on to learn a little more about the playwright and the play we’ll be seeing on Monday!

Kwik Jones has been writing plays for thirty years. A theater major at Goddard College, Kwik’s passion started in acting and quickly turned into playwrighting due to his love of storytelling. Kwik has developed plays such as: A Strange Seed, Forgotten Soul, Voices, Black Like Me, Jupiter is Stormy, Puzzle Dream, Memphis Bound, Water Boyz, A Cup of Life, and many more.

A three-time finalist in the Downtown Urban Arts Festival in New York for his play,

Continue reading →

Beverly Austin is Co-Winner of the 2020 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award and now, three years later, is finally seeing her Award-Winning Script’s World Premiere. Read on to learn a little more about Beverly and the play you’ll be seeing in August!

ET: Hi Beverly, welcome back! You won the Essential Theatre Playwriting Award back in 2020…How does it feel to know that your play will finally be having its world premiere later this summer?

BA: I’m thrilled. Ellen McQueen and Peter Hardy are two of the best people working…So to have the chance to actually work with them is the highlight,

Continue reading →

Matthew Hoffman is the 2023 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award winner with his first full-length play, The Manuscript. Read on to learn a little more about Matthew and the play you’ll be seeing in August!

If you’ve been following along, the name “Matthew Hoffman” might seem familiar: we also interviewed him last May in advance of his first live reading of a play he wrote (you can read that interview here). A year and a couple of months later, that play is poised to make its world premiere on our stage at this summer’s Festival.

Continue reading →

The August 22 Bare Essentials Play Reading is Shark Week by Anneka Rose. Read on to learn a little more about the playwright and the play we’ll be seeing Wednesday night!

Anneka Rose, a Los Angeles native, is a recent alum from Emory University, graduating with a degree in playwriting with high honors. Her work usually has underlying or very obvious ties to female rage, focusing on young female protagonists using anger as a catalyst for change. Theater is a space for Anneka to scream, vent, and cry about the current state of our world. She has been featured multiple times at Emory as a student playwright and received high honors on her undergraduate thesis,

Continue reading →

The August 10 Bare Essentials Play Reading is Barbie Liberation Organization by Robert Fuson. Read on to learn a little more about the playwright and the play we’ll be seeing Wednesday night!

Robert Fuson (He/They) was raised in Greenville, SC where he attended Furman University and worked in community and professional theatre for 5 years primarily as a director. They moved to Atlanta in 2019, working initially as the Company Manager for Horizon Theatre’s Apprentice Company, which is when he wrote this play, completing it a month before the Covid pandemic hit. Barbie Liberation Organization was accepted for multiple staged readings,

Continue reading →

The August 9 Bare Essentials Play Reading is The Exhibit by Ozzy Wagner. Read on to learn a little more about the playwright and the play we’ll be seeing Tuesday night!

An alum of Emory University, Ozzy is an early-career Atlanta and Seattle-based playwright whose plays often explore class, gender, and performance—and sometimes insist on feeding the audience! Ozzy was a semifinalist for this year’s Jerome Fellowship and the ROO residency at the Bechdel project, and their work has been featured in festivals at the Kennedy Center, Horizon Theatre, Barter Theatre, Theater Emory, and more.

ET: So tell us about the play we’ll be hearing Tuesday night?

Continue reading →

Join Essential Theatre and Hush Harbor Lab on August 18 for a one-night-only reading of Kelundra Smith’s new play, The Wash. But first, read on to learn more about theatre critic, arts journalist, and playwright, Kelundra Smith.

Kelundra Smith is a storyteller whose mission is to connect people to cultural experiences and each other. A Georgia native, she got into theatre because that’s where teachers put the kids who talk too much in class. As a playwright, she has a passion for southern historical narratives and writing stories about people who no one else sees. In her other life,

Continue reading →

Monday night’s Bare Essentials Play Reading is The Manuscript by Matthew Hoffman. Read on to learn a little more about the playwright and the play we’ll be seeing Monday night!

Matthew Hoffman was born in Normal, IL and grew up in small-town southwest Michigan. His family moved to North Carolina and he graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill before moving to Atlanta, where he’s been ever since. Hoffman says he’s been “theatre-adjacent” all his life, acting in a micro-budget indie film, taking improv comedy classes, filling drawers with drafts of scripts, but only lately has he found the guts to really put himself out there.

Continue reading →