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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-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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On Monday, Acappella The Musical (book by Vynnie Meli) was awarded the NYMF/Stage Rights Publishing Award as well as Outstanding Musical Direction, Outstanding Orchestrations/Arrangements, Outstanding Ensemble Performance.

Congratulations Vynnie!

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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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November 13-16, the Gainesville Theatre Alliance presents the next play in their Discovery Series, The Nightingale Rose by Patricia Henritze. Most recently seen under a different title in Atlanta as part of the Brave New Works series, Henritze’s play explores the inner life of Florence Nightingale. Check out this interview we had with her back in 2014.

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click here to view the complete report: Fall 2014 power2give update – one year later

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CONGRATULATIONS
to all the 2015 Suzi Bass Award winners. We’re especially proud of the following folks, whose work you’ve also seen on our stage throughout the years:

Philip DePoy (Outstanding Production – Play, Edward Foote, the Alliance Theatre)

Tiffany Porter (Outstanding Featured Actress, The Whale, Actor’s Express)

Robin Bloodworth, Bobby Labartino
(Outstanding Ensemble Cast – Play, Clybourne Park, Aurora Theatre)

Brad Raymond (Outstanding Ensemble Cast – Musical, Chasin’ Dem Blues, Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company)

Topher Payne (Gene-Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award, 

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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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Atlanta playwright Topher Payne made his New York debut earlier this month with “Perfect Arrangement,” what the New York Times calls a “frothy but ultimately dark comedy” about two State Department employees hiding their same sex relationships during the Pink Scare of the 1950s…Click here to read the full article.

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They’re back! Some shows just can’t stay dead! Your favorite band of specters has returned and is ready to celebrate Halloween with a cavalcade of creepy stories, frightful songs, and devilish dances from around the world and beyond this mortal plane. Featuring new stories and old favorites, this ghostly jamboree is dreadfully fun for the living AND the dead. Winner of the 2013 Suzi Bass Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Musical. Featuring all your favorite Dreadfuls including Essential’s own Spencer Stephens as Darkly Dreadful!

Closing Night Party: Sat, Oct. 31 @ 7pm
with games and costume contest with prizes!

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