Now through February 21, long-time Essential Theatre artist Lauren Gunderson’s play I and You is playing at Aurora Theatre in Gwinnett County.

Lauren has been with Essential since 1999, when she was cast in the first ever Essential Theatre Festival as an actor. Two years later, she won the first-ever Essential Theatre Playwriting Award. And now, she lives in L.A. and writes plays that are produced all over the world: just weeks after I and You closes at Aurora, The Revolutionists opens at 7Stages, and Theatrical Outfit’s production of her play Silent Sky was the talk of the town last year.

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JOIN ESSENTIAL THEATRE AND FRIENDS ON FEBRUARY 29 AT RED BRICK BREWERY FOR OUR 2016 FESTIVAL ANNOUNCEMENT EVENT!

Meet the co-winners of the 2016 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award and the directors of their WORLD PREMIERE PRODUCTIONS.

Mix and mingle with past Essential playwrights and company members.

Win prizes and just plain have fun with Essential Trivia by Trivial Matters!

Sample great beer from Georgia’s oldest operating craft brewery, Red Brick Brewing.
Brewery Tours at 7 and 8pm! Gluten-free beverage options (ie, wine) generously provided by Ansley Wine Merchants.

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Click here to read more, or sign up for our mailing list at the bottom of the page to receive our newsletter directly!

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Since writing MISS SMALL TOWN U.S.A. and submitting it to the Essential Theatre Playwriting Competition, Gerry Bartholomei has fulfilled a long-time dream of moving to New York. Weather permitting, he’ll be joining us on Tuesday night for our Bare Essentials reading, however.

Read on to learn about the play we’ll be hearing Tuesday night and what Gerry has been up to since our last interview with him in 2014:

Tell us a little bit about your play.
MISS SMALL TOWN U.S.A. is the story of two old friends who reconnect after the husband of one them is arrested for his involvement in a sex traffic affair.

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“No one is safe, no gender, race, background, or social economic status.”

ATLANTA, GA – Atlanta based company Karibu Performance Arts presents the World Premiere of Mia Kristin Smith’s Kept, January 22-24 and 29-31, 2016 at the West End Performing Arts Center. Kept follows the story of “Seth”, who wants outs the family business and deals with race, poverty, and sex trafficking in the city of Atlanta.

The synopsis reads: “When most young boys dream of being The Avengers or famous pro athletes, “Seth” had a very different reverie aligned for him,

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Essential Theatre first produced a play by Theroun Patterson in 2011, A Thousand Circlets. Winner of that year’s Essential Theatre Playwriting Award and enthusiastically received by audiences and critics alike,  Circlets went on to a second production at Detroit Repertory in 2013. The premiere of this play was an early milestone in actor-turned-playwright Theroun Patterson’s transition, and since that time he has continued writing prolifically and successfully and has come to be an important voice in the burgeoning Atlanta playwrights’ scene.

Today we want to take a moment to appreciate how far he’s come,

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Miss Small Town USA
BY GERRY L. BARTHOLOMÄI
JANUARY 26, 2016
7:30PM
WEST END PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
945 RALPH DAVID ABERNATHY BLVD, ATLANTA, GA
DIRECTED BY PETER HARDY
FEATURING THE READING TALENTS OF SUZANNE ROUSH AND LINDY WOOD
“Two old friends look back on their lives and wonder how the hell they got here.”

Click here to read our 2014 interview with the playwright, here to read about what he’s been up to since 2014 and here to find out about the Jan 28 $10 Industry Night for the current production onstage at West End,

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Sincere thanks to EVERYONE who made a donation to our power2give campaign last month. Together, we raised over $5,000 to support Essential’s play development work through the Essential Theatre Playwriting Award and the Bare Essentials Reading Series and to launch us into this year’s strategic planning.

There’s much for which to be thankful as we embark into 2016, the very first of which are this campaign’s supporters:

Chris Carlsten, Celia Quillian, Katie Taylor, Lenny Pallats, Daniel Guyton,JoAnne Lengyel, Cathy Jamison, Alex Van, Antonia McCain, Sherry Shaw, Paul Donnelly, Steven, the Cantrells, Libby Mickle, Doug Kaye, Mark Perloe,

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Our matching-gift power2give campaign expires in just a few hours, so if you woke up this morning and your first thought was, “Man, I wish I’d had a chance to make that donation to Essential in all the year-end fuss,” you’re in luck!

We’ve already raised quite a bit, and we’ve been blessed with so many talented artists and businesspeople who are willing to donate their talents to support our work. But if you’re interested in getting in on the fun, there’s still time. Donate before midnight and your donation is matched.

As for the goals we set out in our power2give campaign?

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IT’S THE FINAL DAY to see your donation matched through our power2give campaign — don’t wait any longer to make your donation!https://www2.power2give.org/campaigns/210

#1 in our accompanying 20 DAYS OF ESSENTIAL PLAYS is LILLIAN LIKES IT, winner of the 2015 Essential Playwriting Award, written by Joshua Mikel and produced in this past summer’s Festival.

“Getting a piece through Essential has become sort of a rite of passage for the GA playwright I think,” said Mikel in an interview before LILLIAN LIKES IT opened this past August, “It’s an amazing and necessary thing to have a company that pulls from the local talent here,

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