Our first online play reading ever will be happening on Tuesday night! Read on here to learn a little about our playwright and the play we’ll be seeing on Tuesday:

Hannah Manikowski is a Georgia-born, nationally recognized new play artist who holds a BFA in Directing from the School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University. Hannah loves women in both the lesbian sense and the feminist sense, and she especially loves writing plays by, for, and about them. She is a 2020 O’Neill finalist and the winner of the 2018 – 2019 Judith Barlow Prize. Additionally, she is a proud alumna of The 24 Hour Plays: Nationals, Horizon Theatre’s Young Playwrights Festival, and the inaugural Tepper Semester Playwriting Program, where she studied under Antoinette Nwandu. Following her reading with Essential Theater, Hannah’s newest play, The Sunrise from the Moon, has an upcoming reading with the MACH 33 Festival, a collaboration between Pasadena Playhouse and CalTech. Oh: perhaps most importantly, she foster homeless bunny rabbits.

I wrote Sunrise in response to my own experience with the profound loneliness connected with existing specifically as a lesbian in a world that did everything in its power to prevent me from identifying this part of who I am – and that continues to do everything in its power to prevent me from connecting with my history and my community as a woman who’s exclusively same-sex attracted. Idk, sometimes, I feel like I’m from the moon. It’s also kind of an exploration of my experience with ambition and how being a characteristically ambitious human has served as my life raft in an otherwise unstable, chaotic life while simultaneously totally fucking me up. Also I fucking love jellyfish.

Where did you get the idea for this play? What made you want to write it?

This play is the vehicle for talking about all the seemingly disparate, sometimes unintelligible ephemera that collides and becomes enmeshed with/inseparable from Who I Am as a lesbian woman in 2020. Basically!! Shit is whack!! And I don’t know how to talk about ANY OF IT without talking about ALL OF IT!! Which is why this play is full of outer space and a disarming accumulation of Vanilla Coke and moon mannequins and jellyfish and Billie Holiday. Basically: as a writer, I feel a lot like one of those little birds that runs around collecting shiny things, and, on the surface, none of it seems connected, but THEN he tosses all that shiny stuff together, and – ta-da! – he’s built a nest! And he wins the girl! And he does a funny lil dance to boot! So, I collected a lot of shiny things, and this play is the nest, and Essential is the lady bird I am hoping to woo, and, when all is said and done, I hope we can come together and do a funny lil dance to boot.

How did you get into playwriting?

I grew up holed away in my room, writing fiction to escape an insidiously abusive, isolated home life. Everyone I knew anticipated I would become a novelist – but then I found theatre, and, for the first time, I was able to connect with a loving, supportive community. Theatre offered me a level of safety I had never known. Within months, it consumed my life. Naturally, my writing took a backseat. I loved acting, but I was dissatisfied with the lack of agency afforded to me in the field. So, I went on to study Directing at Carnegie Mellon University. Frankly, while I was grateful for the creative liberties offered to me as a director, directing itself often made me queasy with anxiety. I dreaded the hours leading up to my rehearsals – until I wrote a short story for a creative writing class, and my professor approached me to say, “Hannah, this isn’t a short story; this is a scene from a play.” She was right. I started writing for Playground, CMU’s yearly festival of new student work, and I directed my own pieces. Writing for the stage felt like putting on glasses for the first time in the sixth grade. Suddenly, the world came into focus. Ever since, I have been enraptured by the world of new play development: particularly when serving as a playwright, but also when working as a dramaturg or director. For me, that’s home.

What is the importance of staged readings in your own creative process and the development of your play?

For me, it’s in understanding the rhythm of the piece. When you hear your work read aloud with actors, suddenly, you have a window into its cadence: where it clips along, where it lags, where it sings… I’ve always loved the energy of a reading. It’s jointly terrifying and thrilling to gauge the reactions of a room of people who are connecting with your work for the first time – especially when it’s work over which you’ve been slaving away for months or years.

What do you hope to gain from this Bare Essentials experience?

Mostly, I’m excited to reconnect with the piece and with my identity as a playwright! Lockdown has sapped my creative energy. I miss my artistic community, and I’m ready to jump back into the work I love.

Where else can we see your work, either recently, currently or in the future?

Sunrise will soon enjoy a reading through the MACH 33 Festival, a collaboration between Pasadena Playhouse and Caltech. My website (where you can also find my fiction podcast) is here and  my NPX profile is here.

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Sunrise from the Moon will be our first-ever online play reading!

Sign up through Eventbrite to receive your link to attend!

Tuesday, August 11, at 7:30pm.

Directed by Peter Hardy.

Readers: Ash Anderson, Erika Miranda, Jeff Hathcoat, Kevin Qian,  Amee Vyas, Yolanda Asher

All readings in the Bare Essentials Play Reading Series are free and open to the public thanks to support from Georgia Humanities, in partnership with the Georgia Department of Economic Development, through funding from the Georgia General Assembly. Funding for this program is also provided by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. This series is curated by Essential’s founding Artistic Director, Peter Hardy.

 

Funding for this program is provided by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners.

 

Recommended by Education Associate Emily McClain:

The Georgia Department of Education has a fantastic collection of Fine Arts resources for all content areas. It’s free and available to teachers and I wanted to share with my teacher-network. We are resilient and creative and endlessly flexible. We will continue to share our love of art and music and theatre and dance with our students in this new medium!

Recommended in a recent email newsletter from the office of Essential’s Congressman, John Lewis:

Educational Tools for Distance Learning: While many schools have temporarily closed their doors, tools are available to assist parents with educating their children from home. However, each school or school district fosters its own program on how to adjust to the current pandemic. I recommend contacting your relevant institution for best practices. Talking to children about Coronavirus may be difficult but the CDC has provided an online resource to help parents and those working with children approach the subject. PBS has also provided tips on how to approach the topic.

Although changes have been made in how our students are learning, civil rights must still be protected. The Department of Education has released a fact sheet and webinar to serve as guidance for protecting the civil rights of students with disabilities for schools using online learning tools during the COVID-19 outbreak. Additional resources for schools and school personnel may be found on the Department of Education’s website.

In addition, there are nationwide resources available for distance learning provided by PBS and the Smithsonian.

For Students:
PBS Kids Livestream Channel
PBS Kids Game App

For Parents:
The PBS Daily Newsletter
PBS Parents Website

For Educators:
PBS Learning Media K-12
PBS Distance Learning Resources
Smithsonian Learning Lab (Resources for Distance Learning)
Smithsonian Resources and Collections
Smithsonian Museum Specific Collections

Looking for some creative, inspiring programming that’s a little more home-grown? Check out the digital offerings from Atlanta’s own Center for Puppetry Arts here!

The work these people have long done to develop frontier-pushingly accessible programming is profound, and their response to our current situation has been swift and inspiring. Icing on the cake? Tried and true Essential audiences will recognize at least one friendly face in their Digital Learning Artist-in-Residence Jeffrey Zwartjes!

Thanks to EVERYONE who made a donation to our 2020 Festival power2give campaign. Together, we raised over $8,000 to support the 2020 Essential Theatre Play Festival!

Deepest thanks, from everyone at Essential, and we’ll see you at the theater!

Wednesday night’s Bare Essentials reading is The Odds Against Death, co-written by John D. Babcock III (Independent, 2017) and Ted Westby. Read on to find out a little more about the pair, and about the play we’ll be seeing on Wednesday!

The writers:

John D. Babcock III is a writer for Agatha’s – A Taste of Mystery and the Mystery Café of Indianapolis. He is also a writer/performer with Sketchworks Comedy. John was cast in, and wrote additional scenes for, the Sketchworks Comedy production of VAPE THE MUSICAL– a parody of GREASE. VAPE won BroadwayWorld Atlanta’s 2018 award for “Best New Work” (non-professional). In August 2019, VAPE ran at Improv Asylum’s theatre in New York City. John’s play INDEPENDENT – about filmmaker John Cassavetes – received its premier at Essential Theatre’s 2017 Play Festival. John’s other writing credits include on-air scripts for Turner Classic Movies, Laughing Matters corporate entertainment, and the upcoming fantasy/comedy web series “The Campaign.” John enjoyed writing THE ODDS AGAINST DEATH with Ted Westby and looks forward to seeing their work on stage.

Ted Westby hails from a small Midwestern town and never really grew up. After somehow finishing college he spent twenty years writing and producing on-air content for TV stations around the country. During those tumultuous last years he foolishly wrote and produced four no-budget Indie short films that to this day have been seen by less people than it took to make them. For the past decade, after abandoning his steady day job and screenwriting aspirations, he has made his living photographing actors and a few regular people. In the last few years he has co-written two stage plays, a Television Pilot script, and threatened to finish his true-life book detailing his absurd life with photo models. Ted refuses to eat beets and still enjoys listening to music on cassettes and vinyl.

The Play:

THE ODDS AGAINST DEATH is a modern, classic farce in which a simple romantic dinner for two becomes an evening where five people are confronted with deceit, deception, and Death herself. The play “encompasses my feelings toward love, death, and foolish ideals – not necessarily in that order,” says Ted. “Our endeavor was to give an audience both an entertaining evening as well as a few choice bits to contemplate while they walked back to their cars.”

Where did the idea for this play come from?

Initially conceived by co-author Ted Westby as a short film, The Odds Against Death began its life as a good old fashioned farce about love, miscommunication, and death. He introduced the idea to Babcock and the pair fleshed out the idea and made it into a two act play. “I’ve always been fascinated by theoretical characters, ie: Death, Imaginary friends, anyone out of the accepted norms of ‘reality’,: says Ted, adding, “I found it a wonderful concept to have Death actually come and ‘kill’ someone’s romantic ideals, thus forcing them to come face to face with absolute reality.”

How did you get into playwriting?

Ted: I’ve been writing most of my life, predominantly scripts and screenplays. My original introduction to play-writing began years ago at the 24 Plays presented by the good people at the Horizon Theatre. I co-wrote three short plays during three different 24 Hour Play fests. The Odds Against Death is my first full-length stage play.

John: I began writing sketches and stories in grade school. I continued writing through high school and began writing longer pieces in college. I had a natural interest in writing and was something I always kept doing.

What is the importance of staged readings for your creative process and the development of your play? What do you hope to gain from this Bare Essentials experience?

“Staged readings are a great opportunity to hear the characters come alive. It’s beneficial hearing actors read the work out loud and observing how they interpret the character,” observes John. “Reactions to staged readings inform me what areas need work and what areas did well.” He adds, “There are always surprises.”

“Until you hear it out loud, read by voices other than your own, you don’t really hear it live and breathe,” says Ted in agreement.

“THE ODDS AGAINST DEATH has had a handful of private readings,” says John, “but Ted and I are really looking forward to having the play read to an audience. An audience reaction is what we hope to gain from the reading at Bare Essentials.

Ted adds, “This will be our first reading with an impartial audience. This will be a real good test of how it will be received by a general audience… I hope.”

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The Odds Against Death will be read at the West End Performing Arts Center on Monday, August 12, at 7:30pm. Directed by Bill Murphey.

Readers: Mary Saville, Robby Owenby, Evan Cleaver, Diany Rodriguez, Steve Hudson, Christie Brumfield Baggett, Kathleen McManus, and Anne Stainback Davis.

All readings in the Bare Essentials Play Reading Series are free and open to the public thanks to support from Georgia Humanities, in partnership with the Georgia Department of Economic Development, through funding from the Georgia General Assembly. This series is curated by Essential’s founding Artistic Director, Peter Hardy.

Monday night’s Bare Essentials reading is Waiting for Big Stuff, written by Allan Dodson. Read on to learn a little more about the playwright and the play we’ll be seeing Monday night!

Allan Dodson is a playwright, actor, and director that’s been hanging around Atlanta theater for longer than he’d like to admit. He had a delightful 15 years as a high school theater director and was fortunate enough to study acting under the late William Esper, protege to Sanford Meisner. He’s found himself accidentally specializing in shorter plays, and he’s been produced in various venues around town with a one-act, “Three Hundred and One,” that’s still regularly produced nationally. He says he’d like to be a misunderstood artist, but he can’t quite find the energy.

How did you get into playwriting?

I’ve dabbled in a variety of writing styles over the years, and I’ve even made my living as a writer (NOT a fiction writer). I’ve always enjoyed the rhythms of dialog, and I love live theater, so I’ve gravitated toward playwriting.

Where did you get the idea for this play?

I was dining alone in a fast food joint, and I was told I was Guest 40. It occurred to me that “Guest 40” was my only identity for the next half-hour or so. And a play was born that asks possibly the most important question in the American experience: How long, exactly, will we wait for a burger and an order of rings?

What do you hope to gain from this Bare Essentials experience?

There’s really no experience as valuable as hearing your play read by good actors, seeing how a director interprets it, and seeing how an audience reacts to it. With a staged reading, you can get that experience in a safe place – it becomes a part of the journey.

It’s also nice to get a little exposure, and an honor and confidence-booster to be chosen.

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Waiting for Big Stuff will be read at the West End Performing Arts Center on Monday, August 12, at 7:30pm. Directed by Kati Grace Brown. Readers: Natalie Karp, Charlie Thomas, Jeff Morgan, Sean Kelley, Kirstin Kalvert, Betty Mitchell, Sarah Newby Halicks, Mike Pugh, Alex Pica, Bowen Fox, and Danielle Hopkins.

All readings in the Bare Essentials Play Reading Series are free and open to the public thanks to support from Georgia Humanities, in partnership with the Georgia Department of Economic Development, through funding from the Georgia General Assembly. This series is curated by Essential’s founding Artistic Director, Peter Hardy.

Tuesday Night’s Bare Essentials reading is Henry Darger Takes a Walk, written by Rosalind Sullivan-Lovett. Read on to learn a little more about Roz and the play we’ll be seeing on Tuesday!

Hi Roz, tell us a little about yourself!

I’m a recent Atlanta transplant from Portland, Oregon, having graduated from Emory two and a half months ago and stayed put. I’ve been writing plays since I was a Sophomore in high school, but “Henry Darger” was my first to be published and my most successful to date, having been read previously in Theater Emory’s Brave New Works series and at the Tennessee Williams Literary festival, where it won first place in the one act play contest. My next project will be taking my solo show, “And God Forbid It Should Be So,” to New York City, where it is set to be performed at the United Solo Theatre Festival.

And what’s this play about?

“Henry Darger Takes a Walk” is in large part about familial grief and the inheritance of trauma. The suicide of a family member is jarring not only for the nature of its suddenness, but also for its sense of history and its brand-mark on the future. Grace’s journey is not so much about grieving as searching for a way to save her remaining family members from a narrative of mental illness that she fears threatens to swallow all of them, including herself.

Wow! What prompted you to tackle this subject?

I wrote this in the wake of my aunt’s suicide, in large part to find a way to link my own experiences with crippling loneliness as a college Freshman with the grief I felt in the wake of her unexpected death. I had, after that grim Freshman year, run into Henry Darger for the first time in Olivia Laing’s excellent book The Lonely City, a half-memoir-half-research piece that spoke to 19-year-old me in a way that nothing else could at the time. I saw in Darger’s isolation both a tie to my own experience and a selfish sense of confusion that a man so utterly alone died of old age, while two of my family members had found themselves incapable of living so long. I had a lot that I needed to come to terms with, and I also had a Sophomore playwriting class that required me to write a lengthy one act that I had no other ideas for. Thanks to my professor, Jim Grimsley, for allowing me to write this so soon after the incident occurred; I would probably have suggested to myself that I shouldn’t.

What, exactly, got you into playwrighting?

From procrastinating on studying for high school midterms: I wrote my first one act in a single weekend out of a refusal to do math.

What is the importance of staged readings in your own creative process and the development of your play?

Voice is so entirely the point of playwriting that I can’t imagine writing a play and considering it complete without having had multiple readings. I discovered so many things about this play from its readings at Emory and the Tennessee Williams Fest, many of them aspects of the middle-aged characters that I, as a young writer, would not have noticed without the contributions of the older actors in those roles. Understanding the shape and energy of a play is impossible without readings.

And what are you hoping to gain from this Bare Essentials experience in particular?

A sense of how the play behaves for another set of eyes and ears—where does it move and drag, what shines and what doesn’t. I’m also so excited to get to work with the Essential Theatre on this, and to have a chance to have work produced in Atlanta’s professional sphere for the first time!

Well thank you – and congratulations! We are definitely looking forward to your reading on Tuesday. Outside of Tuesday’s reading, where else can interested audience find your work?

In New York city at the United Solo Festival! Also hopefully in Atlanta in the coming year or so.

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Henry Darger Takes a Walk will be read at the West End Performing Arts Center on Tuesday, August 6, at 7:30pm. Directed by Natalie Fox. Readers: Genevieve Leopold, Emih Abrahamson, Olivia Dawson, Brad Brooks, Brandon Deen, Joey Davila, Brieanna Haberling.

All readings in the Bare Essentials Play Reading Series are free and open to the public thanks to support from Georgia Humanities, in partnership with the Georgia Department of Economic Development, through funding from the Georgia General Assembly. This series is curated by Essential’s founding Artistic Director, Peter Hardy.