…Three of them are Georgians, and two of those are Essential Theatre Playwriting Award Winners! Looks like we’re not the only ones who are fans of great Georgia writers. Congratulations to Topher Payne, Lauren Gunderson and Steve Yockey for making the Top 10 list.
Check out the full article in Southern Theatre Magazine (starting on p19).
Essential’s Artistic Director Peter Hardy was onstage with several other familiar faces in Aris Theatre’s second-ever production, the just-closed PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME!
An excellent production of a classic but rarely produced play, an ArtsATL review called it “Magnetic” and “a signal of the kind of classy work the company seems capable of.”
Click here to read the full interview!
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by Jennifer Kimball
Today is September 11. Last night, the President announced that we “will lead a broad coalition to roll back this terrorist threat” of ISIS. This weekend, Amber Bradshaw and Thom Stanley, whose work you recently saw on Essential’s stage in this summer’s World Premiere production of That Uganda Play, are at the 9th Micro-Festival of Unfinished Puppetry in Quebec, Canada, workshopping and presenting a full one-act length version of their collaboratively developed Learning to Fly, which premiered this past spring as a 12 minute short in XPT at the Center for Puppetry Arts.
We’re proud to announce that, in our first year of participating in the Suzi Bass Awards, Essential Theatre has its first nomination: Karla Jennings’ Ravens & Seagulls for Best World Premiere Production! Congrats and thanks to director David Crowe, dramaturg Michael Evenden, and our incredible cast: Sam Traquina, Gina Rickicki, Teresa DeBerry, Jill Perry, Suzanne Roush, Patti French and Sarah Wallis!
And here’s something else that’s cool: Of the eleven plays up for the Suzi’s Gene-Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award, three of them were produced by the Essential Theatre — more than any other company! To wit: That Uganda Play by Theroun Patterson,
by Jennifer Kimball
What a summer it has been! This was our sixteenth Festival, and our third all-Georgia Festival. A revamped Festival layout featuring two world premieres and six readings. All Georgia writers, all Georgia artists. Our first year in West End, our first year in the Suzi Bass competition. Two Suzi recommendations and one nomination. New community partnerships with the West End Performing Arts Center and Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery. Continued relationships with VSA Arts of Georgia and Stagehands sign language interpreters through them, record levels of Festival sponsorships and community support. It has truly been an exciting and inspiring experience!
by Parker Hilley
We at Essential Theatre would like to congratulate Ellen McQueen on her piece that recently won the first annual Atlanta Artists’ Lab put on by the Alliance Theatre! While we can all acknowledge that this sounds like a huge achievement – and this writer assures you reader that it is, in fact, a huge achievement – I think it would be easier to appreciate the magnitude of Ms. McQueen’s accomplishment if a little background was provided on her winning piece.
THE LOCAL, which was developed and directed by Ms. McQueen for the 2012 Essential Festival,
A caustic comedy about the corporatization of religion, Christ America rounds out this summer’s Bare Essentials Reading Series this Tuesday night. Penned by Bill Gibson of Alpharetta, GA.
Tell us a little bit about the play we’ll be hearing Tuesday night.
Set in the corporate world of the near future, Christ America is about how companies profit from peoples’ fears, including their religious beliefs.
BRITT WACKENHUTT is a sales executive who, having been unemployed for 9 months, is under financial and other pressures to gain employment in an unhealthy economic climate.
