20 Days of Essential Plays: Evelyn in Purgatory

#19 in our 20 DAYS OF ESSENTIAL PLAYS is EVELYN IN PURGATORY, by today’s birthday boy, Topher Payne. Happy Birthday, Topher!

EVELYN IN PURGATORY was the winner of the 2012 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award, and it premiered as part of our 2012 Essential Theatre Play Festival.

In recent months-to-years, Topher has become a tremendously celebrated and produced Georgia playwright, having been produced from Alaska to Florida and earned his first off-Broadway production in New York this year as well. Throughout his success, he has been a passionate and steadfast advocate for the Atlanta theatre community as an excellent home for new plays and playwrights,

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20 Days of Essential Plays: Qualities of Starlight

Happy holidays everyone!
Last year during our fall power2give campaign, we brought you 40 DAYS OF ESSENTIAL PLAYWRIGHTS, which many of you said you enjoyed.
Well TODAY we are pleased to kick off 20 DAYS OF ESSENTIAL PLAYS for your entertainment during this holiday season (and the duration of our power2give campaign).

#20 in our 20 DAYS OF ESSENTIAL PLAYS today is…QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT, by Gabriel Jason Dean!!

Winner of the 2010 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award, QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT premiered as part of the 2010 Essential Theatre Play Festival.

“Peter Hardy and the Essential Theatre were an invaluable help to me,”

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Don’t dismay, get your tickets today!

Commissioned by Stage Door Players in Dunwoody, GA, written by Topher Payne, directed by Shannon Eubanks (Director, Lillian Likes It, 2015 Essential Theatre Festival) and featuring the dynamic acting talents of Bryan Brendle, Amanda Cucher, Shelly McCook, Doyle Reynolds, Gina Rickicki, Emily Sams and Ben Silver, Let Nothing You Dismay is enjoying a very successful first run and is sure to become a holiday tradition in years to come.

“I’m a longtime fan of the work done at Stage Door Players and the relationship Robert Egizio has built with their patrons during his tenure,”

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Meet the Playwright: Bill Gibson

We most recently interviewed tonight’s playwright, Bill Gibson, back in 2014 leading up to our reading of his play Christ, America. Click here to read the full interview. His latest work, The Cisco Kid Was My Mother’s Boyfriend, is our reading at tonight’s Bare Essentials. Here’s what Bill had to say about this play:

What was your inspiration for Cisco Kid?
My late wife of 51 years: It is about her father and grandmother.

How long have you been working on this script?
7-8 years.

What has the development process looked like,

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Now through Nov 30: Holiday Raffle!

Click here to learn more about the show

Click here to read an interview with Topher about the show

and click here to enter the raffle today!

 

Thanks to a generous donation from our friends at Stage Door Players, Essential Theatre is pleased to be able to offer our friends and supporters a chance to win tickets to the World Premiere Production of Atlanta playwright Topher Payne’s new holiday special, Let Nothing You Dismay.

Opening December 4 and running through December 20,

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Thanksgiving Thoughts

-from Artistic Director Peter Hardy

Maya Angelou said “We find our path by walking it,” and that’s part of what’s happened to me with the Essential Theatre over the past seventeen years.  I came to Atlanta mostly wanting to work as a playwright and a director.  In 1999, when we started producing the annual Essential Theatre Festival, I decided that each Festival would feature at least one production of a new play by a Georgia writer. Frankly, this was something of a calculated choice — I figured that doing locally-written plays would make us stand out and be a good way for us to get support. 

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