Georgia playwrights Karen Wurl and Derek Dixon are co-winners of the 2016 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award. They’ll receive full productions this summer and a $600 cash prize.
The Essential contest, now in its 16th year, is the only competition dedicated to the work of Georgia playwrights.
The winning plays
DISPOSSESSED. By Karen Wurl. Premiering July 29. It’s described as a romantic comic fantasy about a Yiddish theater company in the 1920s. A young actress trying to decide between two suitors and her career dreams finds herself confronted with the living embodiment of the character she’s portraying — a bride possessed by the spirit of a dead lover. Girl talk ensues. Essential artistic director Peter Hardy directs.
Wurl, who won the 2005 Essential award for Miss Macbeth, is a playwright, dramaturg, director, teacher and semi-retired slam poet who’s spent half her life in Chicago, half in Atlanta and the extra bits in Michigan, Wisconsin and Texas. She is a graduate of Texas Tech University and teaches English part-time at Kennesaw State University.
WHEN THINGS ARE LOST. By Derek Dixon. Premiering Aug. 5. If someone you loved went missing, how far would you go to find them? A man goes on a dream quest to figure out what happened to his best friend. Dixon’s piece is described as a funny and moving play about friendship, loss, understanding and forgiveness. Amber Bradshaw, managing director of Working Title Playwrights, directs.
Dixon, who began writing plays five years ago, is relatively new on the Atlanta scene. When Things Are Lost will be his first fully produced play. “When I started writing this play,” he says, “I never thought it would leave the hard drive of my computer, much less be seen by human beings.”
This year’s festival will again include the Bare Essentials Play Reading Series selected from competition entries.
Essential will introduce the winners at a Feb. 29 announcement party at Red Brick Brewing Co. Tickets are $37.74 in advance and $42.99 at the door. Sponsor packages are also available HERE. The deadline for submissions to the 2017 competition is April 23. For details, or to submit, go HERE.
