by Parker Hilley

Topher Payne, onstage soon at Steppenwolf next month! Payne’s Angry Fags is presented by Pride Films and Plays as part of the Garage Rep at the renowned Steppenwolf in Chicago. Originally premiered right here in Atlanta at 7Stages Theatre in Little Five Points,  Angry Fags shows what happens when “activism gets angry.” Described as an “Oscar Wilde-meets-‘Fight Club’ fever dream about how good ideas go bad,” the play is a riveting foray into American politics, bomb building, and pistachios. Opening February 20,

Since its inception in 2010,

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2015 Essential Playwriting Contest Winner downloadable press kit

Essential Theatre is proud to announce the winner of the 2015 Essential Theatre Playwriting Contest: Joshua Mikel’s Lillian Likes It. The winning play will receive both a full production in the 2015 Essential Theatre Festival and a cash prize. Now in its fifteenth year, the Essential Theatre Playwriting Contest is the only contest exclusively dedicated to the work of Georgia playwrights.

Says Essential’s Artistic Director, Peter Hardy, “We liked Lillian Likes it because it’s a funny, theatrical look at the world of internet dating,

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-from Artistic Director Peter Hardy

The first Essential Theatre Festival opening in January of 1999, sixteen years ago this month.  Back then, we called it the Festival of New American Theatre, because the name “Essential Theatre” didn’t mean much to anyone yet, and because our mission was to bring American plays to Atlanta that hadn’t been yet been seen in this part of the country. And part of our mission was to annually produce the World Premiere of one new play by a Georgia writer.

In the first few years of the Festival, alongside work by such nationally renowned authors as Paula Vogel,

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Start off your new year right, with John Lemley on City Cafe at noon today, when he features Atlanta’s own Francine Reed!

From WABE‘s website:

On Friday’s City Café with John Lemley:
More of our favorite stories of 2014, including John’s conversation with singer and Georgia Music Hall of Famer Francine Reed.
It’s beginning at noon on the Friday edition of City Café.

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New Year’s spotlight:
Priscilla Smith and Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery, who brought us the Neighbors art exhibit as part of the 2014 Essential Theatre Festival, were tagged by Creative Loafing Atlanta as People to Watch in 2015.
They’ll be joining us again during the 2015 Festival, so you can “watch” them there — but in the meantime, they’ve got lots of great stuff going on in their new home downtown, so be sure to check them out there as well!

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Check out ArtsATL’s Year In Review, where RAVENS & SEAGULLS clocked in as #8 of the top 10 best plays, with Suzanne Roush named Best Actress for her work in that play and David Crowe dubbed Best Director. Thanks ArtsATL, Andrew Alexander and Jim Farmer! And thanks to everyone who helped make our production a success.

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Jordan Pulliam

BAT-HAMLET was Jordan’s first full-length work, premiering with Essential in 2012 and going on to be produced three more times since then, in Charleston, Louisville and Chicago.

Now, more than two years after BAT-HAMLET’s premiere, Jordan has this to say about seeing his work come to life onstage with Essential:

“Seeing my play, Bat-Hamlet, produced by the Essential Theatre was one of the greatest thrills of my life. I’d hardly imagined any theatre anywhere could take the spectacle that was parading through my head and put it onto a stage for others to see,

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WE DID IT!!

Thanks to Bob Smith for making the final donation to our power2give campaign. We are so proud and thankful for your support, and for the support of everyone who made a donation to our power2give campaign this fall.

If you see any of these people, be sure to give them a hug from us:
William Hardy, Mark Perloe, Rozanne Stark, Cindy Dover, Cheryl Shaw, Karla Jennings, Rial Ellsworth, Katherine Brokaw, Cathy Jamison, Lauren Gunderson, Maryanne Gaunt, Hank Kimmel, Chris Carlsten, Johnny Thigpen, Jane Kroessig, Jo Howarth Noonan, Susan Bledsoe, Annie Harrison Elliott,

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Lauren Gunderson

Happy final Monday of our 40 Days of Essential Playwrights series!
In case you haven’t noticed, Monday posts, falling at the start of the week, have tended to be posts about Essential playwright “firsts,” and we are really piling them on today!

Lauren Gunderson, as we’ve said before, was our first playwriting award winner. She won the award with her first-ever full-length play. During her first year in school at Emory. An auspicious and well-received kick-off to the Essential Theatre Playwriting Award tradition.

Here’s an excerpt from the Emory paper published during PARTS THEY CALL DEEP:

We’re proud to have supported Lauren’s work.

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Peter Hardy

Not only is Peter the founder of Essential Theatre, he is a national award-winning playwright himself who’s had over 30 productions of his work done around the country. Named Creative Loafing’s critic’s Pick for Best LocalPlaywright in 2010, Peter recently had this to say about his hopes for the Essential Theatre:

“I hope that when playwrights work with Essential, they have the kind of experience I’d like to have when my own plays are produced at a theatre.”

But this is not a new dream. From a letter he wrote in 2008:
“When we started producing these annual festivals in 1999,

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