We are pleased and excited to announce that the 2024 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award winner is Emily McClain, with The Rock & The Hard Place! Her play will receive a full production in this summer’s Festival as well as a $1,000 cash prize. The 2024 Award is sponsored by Could Be Pretty Cool, our Playwriting Award Sponsor since 2021. Emily will be honored at this year’s Celebration of Georgia Playwrights event in April – plan to join us and show your support for Emily and your appreciation for Georgia’s rich dramatic heritage!

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The deadline for the 2025 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award competition is April 23, 2024.

The only competition exclusively dedicated to the work of Georgia playwrights, the winning play will receive both a full production and a $1,000 cash prize. Playwrights must be current Georgia residents, and the plays must be previously unproduced. There are no restrictions as to style, length or subject matter.

Email your script to [email protected] or submit it here today:

Submit a play

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Now through April 30, purchase a Two-, Four-, or Eight-Ticket Festival Pass to guarantee priority access to your preferred dates for this summer’s shows. 

Festival Pass holders will have 48 hour early access on July 1 and 2 to redeem your pass for individual tickets and ensure you get seats according to your preferred schedule before tickets become available to the general public on July 3.

Our Silver Anniversary Festival is shaping up to be the most jam-packed festival yet, so don’t miss out on this chance to immerse yourself in the best of Georgia’s theater scene this summer!

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Join Essential Theatre on Sunday April 28 for a Celebration of Georgia Playwrights!

Meet the 2024 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award Winner, Emily McClain, and celebrate Essential’s – and Georgia’s – rich theatre tradition and the community in which our playwrights grow and thrive.

RSVP

At our Celebration of Georgia Playwrights Event, you’ll get to:

Mix and mingle with folks who, like you, are proud of the literary and dramatic heritage of the place we call home. 

Meet the 2024 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award winner, Emily McClain, and hear about her show, which we’ll be premiering at the 2024 Essential Theatre Play Festival this summer.

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Now through April 16, submit your video submissions for our General Auditions! 

Submit your video audition to [email protected] by April 16, 2024. Auditions should consist of two contrasting monologues with a total length of no more than four minutes.

Please use subject line: [YOUR NAME] GENERAL AUDITION.

PLEASE NOTE: The 2024 Essential Theatre Play Festival will take place August 9 – September 1, 2024 at 7 Stages Theatre in Atlanta, GA. Rehearsals will take place in various locations in the metro area, generally during weekday evenings and weekend days, in July and August.

The Festival will feature a repertory of two full productions – the World Premieres of Peter Hardy’s The Other Part of the Picture (winner of playwriting prizes from New York Script Awards and Best Script Awards – London) and Emily McClain’s The Rock &

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Great News! We have selected our 7 playwrights for the First Annual Southern Fried Bake-Off taking place on January 5-6, 2024 at Core Dance in downtown Decatur!

Congratulations to John Mabey, Victoria Nation, R.P. Singletary, Hank Kimmel, Nathan Jerpe, Diane Dierks, and Marita A. McKee! Follow us on social media to find out more about each of these talented folks.

Don’t miss out on this fun and creative way to jumpstart your new year. Tickets to the 7pm public performance on January 6 are NOW available at EssentialTheatreSouthernFriedBakeOffJan2024.eventbrite.com

Y’all come play with us and watch creativity unfold!

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Read the press release

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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