Celebrating 20 Years: A Look Back at the 2002 Festival

Continuing our look back at the past 19 years of Essential Theatre festivals, today we take a look back at the fourth Essential Theatre Festival, in 2002.

2002 was a very successful year for Essential. The two regional premieres sold very very well. Both were directed by Peter, and, he recalls, “I was real happy with them.”

“Along with being a really good seller for us,” recalls Hardy of Betty’s Summer Vacation, “we had more people walk out on it than any other production, because it was really nasty at times.”

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Celebrating 20 Years: A Look Back at the 2001 Festival

Continuing our look back at the past 19 years of Essential Theatre festivals, today we take a look back at the third Essential Theatre Festival, in 2001.

2001 was an important year for the Essential Theatre Festival: it was the third festival, but the inaugural year of the Essential Theatre Playwriting Competition and Award. The 2001 Festival was comprised of Cruel Disclosures by Bill Canning, Private Eyes by Steven Dietz, and the world premiere of the first Essential Theatre Playwriting Award Winner, Parts They Call Deep by the then-18-year-old Lauren Gunderson.

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Celebrating 20 Years: A Look Back at the 2000 Festival

Continuing our look back at the past 19 years of Essential Theatre festivals, today we take a look back at the second Essential Theatre Festival, in 2000.

Essential’s second Festival took place a year later, in January of 2000. This Festival featured Images in Smoke by Karla Jennings, A Lovely Undertow by Peter Hardy, and The Water Children by Wendy MacLeod. This was the year before the Essential Theatre Playwriting Competition began, but the Festival included two world premiere productions of new plays by Georgia playwrights.

Named one of the year’s fifteen best productions by Creative Loafing’s Curt Holman,

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Celebrating 20 Years: A Look Back at the 1999 Festival

With 20 days left of our 20th Festival power2give campaign and 20% of our funds already raised, we thought it would be extra-special to take a look back at where we’ve been. So today, we take a look back at the first-ever Essential Theatre Festival.

The time was January, 1999. The plays, Little Egypt by Lynn Siefert, Only Children by Karen Wurl* and Desdemona, A Play About A Handkerchief by Paula Vogel.

Not much survives from this first festival in terms of memorabilia – just a couple of photos and Artistic Director Peter Hardy’s recollections.

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FINAL WEEKEND: Morningside, by Topher Payne

Morningside, by Topher Payne, opens at the end of this month at Georgia Ensemble Theatre in Roswell, and it is absolutely rife with Essential names – starting, of course, with the playwright himself!

Directed by Shannon Eubanks, whose adroit direction Essential audiences got to enjoy during 2015’s world premiere of Lillian Likes It, more than half of Morningside’s cast have appeared on Essential’s stage in productions past, including Kelly Criss, Gina Rickicki, Ellen McQueen and Ann Wilson.

Described as The Women meets Steel Magnolias meets The Real Housewives,

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Empty Rooms by Found Stages

Empty Rooms, by Atlanta playwright Annie Harrison Elliot, is being produced in tech offices around Atlanta by Found Stages. The play, the motivation of which is explained by Elliot in this article in the Huffington Post,  includes a number of names familiar to Essential audiences, both onstage and off: Holly Stevenson and Jeffrey Zwartjes are in the cast, Nicole Palmietto directs, and Chelsea Steverson, Barrett Doyle and A. Julian Verner all make up part of the production team.

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Bengal Tiger at 7Stages through Oct 8

This powerful play kicks off 7Stages’ 39th season on a sobering and introspective note. Described by the New York Times as “a visionary new work of American theater,” Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo will leave you with plenty to mull over on your way home after the show. Masterful writing combined with frankly stellar performances from the entire cast and thoughtful, perceptive design and direction from the production team make for a very satisfying night at the theatre.

Laced with notes reminiscent of the performance Essential audiences saw in That Uganda Play back in 2014,

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