We’re proud and happy to announce that Theroun Patterson’s powerful family drama A THOUSAND CIRCLETS, winner of the 2011 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award (and successfully produced in our 2011 Festival) has been picked up for a second production — an 8-week run at the Detroit Repertory Theatre, next spring.  That makes two Essential Award winners in a row that have gone on to a second production (the first being our 2010 prize-winner, Gabriel Dean’s QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT, which was recently produced in Washington, D.C. in the Source Theater Festival).
 
On June 29, Theroun Patterson and Irepresented the Essential Theatre at the LMDA’s Writers Night,

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July/August 2012 – Simply Buckhead: Topher Payne: Actor/Playwright on a roll. Actor/playwright Topher Payne lives in Decatur, but seems to be practically everywhere. In the upcoming year he’ll premier new scripts at area playhouses from Roswell’s Georgia Ensemble Theatre to 7 Stages in Little Five Points, to the Springer Opera House in Columbus.

The Essential Theatre offers a free ticket (and a complimentary glass of wine) for the July 5 Preview performance of its World Premiere production of Topher Payne’s EVELYN IN PURGATORY, a prize-winning drama about public school teachers.  Topher’s play won the 2012 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award for best play written by a Georgia resident.  Set in the infamous “rubber room” of New York City’s public school system, the playwright describes it as being “like The Breakfast Club for teachers.”

The Preview performance will be at 8 p.m. on July 5 in the Actor’s Express space (located in the King Plow Art Center (http://www.actors-express.com/findus/index.html). 

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As many of you know, THE LOCAL is being produced as one of three world premiere Georgia plays in the Essential Theatre Play Festival, running from July 6th through August 5th at the King Plow Arts Center–tickets are on sale now at essentialtheatre.com. THE LOCAL recently ran a fundraising campaign through KickStarter.com to enable the show to be as beautiful as we were inspired to make it, and I’m happy to say that we have met our goal! So now the production is ready to fly and we want to tell you a little about it. 

THE LOCAL is a collaborative theatre project made of short pieces that is OF Atlanta,

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Use the hashtag #EssentialPlayFest to follow us on Twitter or LIKE us on Facebook for the latest news. 

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Essential Theatre seeks two volunteer ushers for each performance. This year’s festival run July 5 through August 5, 2012 but those who sign-up early will have their choice of performances.

Simply follow the link to our OvationTix calendar and select USHER and you will be taken to a page to sign-up. Choose one or two $0 tickets. Ushers are asked to please arrive 60 minutes prior to curtain time. Preferred dress is black skirt or slacks and white shirt. After the performance, we ask that you assist in cleaning up inside the theatre space.

Parking is free at Essential Theatre @ Actors Express. 

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The changing face of theatre criticism in Atlanta has been a subject that fascinated me for some time, having closely observed it for 25 years now. There are a lot of things I miss about the days when you’d get the Friday AJC and one or two theatre reviews would be on the front page, maybe with some more inside. And there are things about those days that I don’t miss (the power that one or two reviewers had). But I can’t help but see this as part of a much larger picture, how the nature of media has changed over that time (more and more rapidly,

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THE LOCAL. Is a collaborative theatre project made of short pieces by different Atlanta artists. All the pieces are set in different Atlanta locations. There are also pieces based on real stories collected from local people. The stage is set f or the many locations through the use of projected photographs.

THE LOCAL is being produced by The Essential Theatre in July, 2012, as part of a three play festival performing in the King Plow Arts Center in Atlanta. The Essential has got the bare bones covered but this project wants to fly. There are playwrights, poets,

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Win a walk-on role in Jordan Pulliam’s Bat-Hamlet, a comic book re-telling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet!

To Enter:
Simply follow the link to our OvationTix calendarand select BAT-HAMLET WALK ON RAFFLE tickets and you will be taken to a page to sign up. Only 25 raffle tickets are available per performance date, so get yours now! Purchase of a raffle ticket does NOT reserve you a seat in the audience. If you would like to attend a performance, you will need to purchase regularly priced tickets as well.

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