Ben Thorpe is the man behind the final Bare Essentials reading in this summer’s festival, Baby Shower for the Anti-Christ, happening this Wednesday August 22 at 7:30pm.

Hi Ben! We’re looking forward to your upcoming reading. Tell us a little about yourself.
I’m a local Atlanta actor and playwright, originally from Snellville, GA. I went to Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA and lived in New York City before moving back to Atlanta in 2015. I’ve acted in productions around town including ‘Hand to God’ and ‘Candide (Alliance)’, ‘Titanic’ (Serenbe), ‘Nobody Loves You’ (Horizon), and ‘Big Fish’

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Courtney Earl wrote tonight’s Bare Essentials reading, Aposteriori. Read on to learn a little more about tonight’s playwright and play!

Hi Courtney! Can you tell us a little about yourself, both personally and professionally?
I got hooked on playwrighting in college when I entered Kennesaw State University’s “Ten Minute Play Festival.” I have been submitting my work to festivals at professional theatres ever since then. I graduated with a BA in Philosophy and a BA in theatre. I got the philosophy degree to improve my writing, and through the marriage of these two degrees I have tried to produce meaningful work.

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Jacobi Howard is the playwright and actor featured in Monday night’s Bare Essentials reading, Pants on Fire!

Tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Jacobi Howard, 32 years old. I am an actor and playwright from Charlotte, NC. Fairly new in town and making my rounds to become acquainted with the very spectacular arts community here in ATL. I graduated with my BFA from the University of North Carolina School of the arts in 2011. Favorite food: Avocado and wheat crackers.

Please share in your own words a little about the play we’ll be seeing.

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Caleb Zane Huett is the playwright featured in tonight’s Bare Essentials reading, The End of William Henry.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’m a bookseller at Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia. I graduated with degrees in Theatre and Public Relations from the University of Georgia. I can name every Pokémon. I’ve never, personally, murdered anyone.

Please share in your own words a little bit about the play we’ll be seeing.
The End of William Henry is my favorite kind of mess. It’s got two different timelines happening at once,

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As the dust settles from this summer’s festival and we’re looking ahead to our next Bare Essentials reading, I got to spend some time with Amber Bradshaw. Amber is directing the next Bare Essentials reading on September 30, but she has been a backbone of Essential’s play development work for years. Read on to hear her thoughts on developing new plays, working with Essential and The End of William Henry, our next Bare Essentials reading this coming Thursday night.

Tell us a little about yourself as an artist. What kinds of projects do you most enjoy working on?

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Natalia Naman is a playwright writing and teaching in her hometown of Columbus, GA. Her plays include The Old Ship of Zion, Lawnpeople, and Crossing Over. Her work has been produced at Princeton University, The Cherry Lane Theatre, HERE Arts Center, and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. She is a Cherry Lane Mentor Project Finalist, a three time nominee for the Wendy Wasserstein Prize, and a Lark Play Development Center alumna. She graduated from Princeton University with a BA in English and NYU Tisch with an MFA in Dramatic Writing.

Earlier this year we spoke with Natalia and got to learn a little bit more about her and The Old Ship of Zion, 

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Gerry Bartholomai, of Chamblee, GA, is the author of tonight’s Bare Essentials offering, Miss Adelia’s Garden. Miss Adelia’s Garden is a poignant drama about the friendship between a young gay man and two elderly southern women.

Tell us a little bit about your play.
Miss Adelia’s Garden is the story of Adelia and Martha – two lifelong friends who live a rather secluded life in a small town in Georgia.

What inspired you to write this play?
It started with a dream I had. In it, I was back in my grandmother’s house in the mountains of Cordoba.

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Brian Forrester is a resident of Roswell, GA and is author of one of next week’s Bare Essentials plays, The Beast of Skitter Creek, a dark supernatural tale about the monster lurking within us.

What inspired you to write this play?
When I was in graduate school I got into a debate with a classmate who insisted that scary stories belong almost exclusively to prose or film/tv. I was convinced that I could tell a fun horror story on a live stage and took up the challenge. Later that winter, I was driving very late at night down a twisting mountain road through a snowstorm in West Virginia when a creepy-looking wooden sign emerged on the edge of my headlight beam.

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Meet Frankie Hardin, resident of Newnan, GA and author of the next Bare Essentials play, Perfect Faith. A fascinating look at the political and religious struggles surrounding Hypatia of Alexandria, a woman who became one of the most famous teachers and philosophers of the 5th Century A. D.

What was the inspiration for this play?

I stumbled upon the Hypatia story while doing some research and was very intrigued by it. I consider myself to be a feminist writer – that is, much of my work is inspired by and in support of stories of strong women,

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Time has just flown, and NEXT MONDAY we will be kicking off the 2014 Essential Theatre Festival with our first Bare Essentials reading, Trolls by Robin L. Burke of Snellville, Ga.

We had a chance to speak with the playwright, and here is what she had to say:

Tell us about the show we are going to see this Monday night.
TROLLS is a farce about a practical-minded attorney who discovers her father believes his river home has trolls.  I guess it’s a pretty fair question to wonder what inspired that.

What was your inspiration for writing this play?

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