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Join Essential Theatre on January 5 and 6 as we launch a new 24 Hour Play Festival at Core Dance in downtown Decatur! A variation on past Atlanta 24 hour play festival formats, the Southern Fried Bake-Off will be an exhilarating 24 hours where participants write, rehearse, and perform brand new plays based on a Bake-Off theme and a list of “ingredients.”

“We want to come together and create new work just for the fun of it,” shares Bake-Off co-creator Emily McClain, “and the Bake Off model allows for maximum creative challenge in a short time frame like a 24 hour plays festival.”

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With a SOLD OUT closing weekend and rave reviews for the record 15 new plays by Georgia playwrights that audiences saw at the Festival this summer, thank you for a fantastic Festival experience that reminds us of all the reasons why we do what we do. Thanks to everyone — onstage, offstage, and in the audience — who turned out to make the 2023 Essential Festival one to remember. 

…Now to start planning for our 25th Anniversary Festival next summer!

Enthusiastic praise for The Manuscript:

“The play is just beautiful. I was truly so impressed and moved.

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Essential Theatre brings back the 24 Hour Play Festival this January, in partnership with Decatur Arts Alliance and Core Dance

December 2023 – Essential Theatre hits the ground running for their 25th Anniversary season on January 5-6, 2024 with the first annual Southern  Fried Bake-Off, a 24 Hour play festival where playwrights, actors, and crew come together at Core Dance in downtown Decatur for an exhilarating 24 hours to write, rehearse, and perform brand new plays based on a Bake-Off theme and a list of “ingredients.”

“What better way to kick off the new year than getting together with people we like to do something we enjoy,

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Giving Tuesday is a worldwide day of giving that takes place each year on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, a global day of generosity where people and organizations unite to impact their communities. GA Gives is a statewide movement within that, to highlight Georgia-based causes and organizations, and you can see our involvement with that movement here!

Essential Theatre has been supporting Georgia playwrights and presenting new plays to Atlanta audiences since 1999. In fact, we are the longest-running theatre exclusively dedicated to supporting the work of Georgia playwrights. Since the first Essential Play Festival in 1999,

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Earlier this month, musician and composer George Kotler-Wallace, who appeared this summer in our world premiere of Beverly Austin’s The Wishing Place, released the soundtrack he composed as part of that production, and you can check it out now on Bandcamp!

Listen to the Album

“This was such a fantastic experience, working with Ellen McQueen to help bring the words of Beverly Austin to life!” shared George. “[Together, the cast and crew] made these characters their own and together we built a world within those pages!

“Maybe you need some chill Holiday travel music.

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This Tuesday’s Bare Essentials Play Reading is The Rock and the Hard Place by Emily McClain. Read on to learn a little more about the playwright and the play we’ll be seeing on Monday!

Emily McClain is a familiar presence to Essential Theatre regulars: her play Slaying Holofernes won the 2019 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award, and in 2020 she co-created and led our community Introduction to Playwriting class, which along with our other playwriting courses she continues to lead to this day.

She keeps busy throughout metro Atlanta as a playwright and theatre educator,

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This Monday’s Bare Essentials Play Reading is Water Boyz by Kwik Jones. Read on to learn a little more about the playwright and the play we’ll be seeing on Monday!

Kwik Jones has been writing plays for thirty years. A theater major at Goddard College, Kwik’s passion started in acting and quickly turned into playwrighting due to his love of storytelling. Kwik has developed plays such as: A Strange Seed, Forgotten Soul, Voices, Black Like Me, Jupiter is Stormy, Puzzle Dream, Memphis Bound, Water Boyz, A Cup of Life, and many more.

A three-time finalist in the Downtown Urban Arts Festival in New York for his play,

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Beverly Austin is Co-Winner of the 2020 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award and now, three years later, is finally seeing her Award-Winning Script’s World Premiere. Read on to learn a little more about Beverly and the play you’ll be seeing in August!

ET: Hi Beverly, welcome back! You won the Essential Theatre Playwriting Award back in 2020…How does it feel to know that your play will finally be having its world premiere later this summer?

BA: I’m thrilled. Ellen McQueen and Peter Hardy are two of the best people working…So to have the chance to actually work with them is the highlight,

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Matthew Hoffman is the 2023 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award winner with his first full-length play, The Manuscript. Read on to learn a little more about Matthew and the play you’ll be seeing in August!

If you’ve been following along, the name “Matthew Hoffman” might seem familiar: we also interviewed him last May in advance of his first live reading of a play he wrote (you can read that interview here). A year and a couple of months later, that play is poised to make its world premiere on our stage at this summer’s Festival.

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After 15 years performing on Atlanta’s Westside, Essential Theatre returns to old stomping grounds in Little Five Points this summer

The Essential Theatre Play Festival returns this summer with a busier lineup than ever, including the world premiere productions of Matthew Hoffman’s The Manuscript and Beverly Austin’s The Wishing Place.

Essential Theatre has given Georgia playwrights a voice for over 20 years, producing 40+ World Premieres and helping launch the careers of nation-wide successes like Lauren Gunderson and Topher Payne.  The 2023 Essential Theatre Play Festival features two world premieres:  Matthew Hoffman’s The Manuscript,

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