This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
Staging an annual play festival brings with it all sorts of artistic and financial challenges. But for Peter Hardy, artistic director of Essential Theatre, this season brought an unexpected one.
For the last eight years, the company has been performing at the West End Performing Arts Center, and the staff loved being there. Yet the center, formerly run by Fulton County, changed hands recently and is now owned by the city of Atlanta. Since city administrators couldn’t guarantee the space would be available this summer, Hardy decided to move to a Plan B.
This year’s event — its busiest ever — will take place at 7 Stages Theatre through Sept. 3. Hardy has good memories from performing at the Little Five Points venue from 2005 to 2008 and working with its staff, so it’s a welcome homecoming. The change, though, has meant that the event is opening two weeks later than planned, with a week shaved off its typical run.
Credit: Casey Gardner Ford
Credit: Casey Gardner Ford
Essential is the longest-running Georgia theater company with a mission to present playwrights from the state. Its annual play festival began in 1999 and includes a cash prize and a staged production. More than 40 world premieres have been part of its offerings.
Matthew Hoffman’s “The Manuscript,” which received the 2023 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award, is directed by Hardy. It’s a drama about two women who come together after the suicide of another. One of the two is the late woman’s mother; the other is her widow.
“The two share grief and try to understand why it happened,” Hardy said. “It becomes a kind of struggle between the two of them over this woman’s memory — who she really was and her own legacy and who will be in control of that legacy. It’s very intricately written and deals with the way we try to control the idea of someone we love, as well as who it is that gets to determine who that person really was.”
Credit: Casey Gardner Ford
Credit: Casey Gardner Ford
Beverly Austin’s “The Wishing Place” is a memory play set in rural Georgia in the 1960s with two families, one Black and one white. Neither are poor but both are struggling to get by.
“A lot of this is about how much you can love a place but need to get away from it,” Hardy said. “Some of the characters are teenagers who love the place they grew up in, but one can’t wait to get away. It’s about longing and belonging.”
“The Wishing Place,” which will be directed by Ellen McQueen, was the co-winner of the 2020 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award but was not produced that year. Just as casting began, the theater world shut down because of the pandemic. Austin had four productions going up around that time that were interrupted.
Credit: Courtesy of Essential Theatre
Credit: Courtesy of Essential Theatre
Austin, a native Atlantan who also is a journalist and educator, has written close to 15 professional productions since her debut in 1974. The first play Kenny Leon directed was one of her projects — ironically, a workshop version of “The Wishing Place” — and her musical, “Cakewalk,” with composers Bryan Mercer and Patrick Hutchinson, was chosen for the 2017 Atlanta Musical Theatre Festival and received a Yip Harburg Foundation grant.
In “The Wishing Place,” Middle Georgia in the early ‘60s may seem like another time and place, but Austin vividly recalls it.
“We were there every week from Atlanta to hunt and fish with my father’s family,” she said. “It’s a memory piece in that way — a lot that happened to me. I think there is a lot of humor (here), some weird, surreal things in it and a bit of a mystery.”
Credit: Courtesy of Essential Theatre
Credit: Courtesy of Essential Theatre
As a writer, she is drawn to the subject of racism, especially since half of her family now is Black. Yet the play isn’t a political polemic or a “beat you over the head (piece) with the inequities of the era,” she said. “There are subtleties in the dialogue and interactions.”
The festival also includes several other components, including a two-night engagement of a piece written and performed by local actress and writer Carolyn Cook. “Walk With Me: Loving Steps on the Dementia Journey” deals with Cook’s mother’s dementia and will have two stagings and talkbacks.
Hush Harbor Lab hosts a reading of Anterior Leverett’s “Yanni Stone and the Honey Pot Trap,” a comedy about a young woman finishing her first play and dealing with dating and sex in modern day Atlanta.
Also on tap, the 10-Minute Play Bootcamp has a new round of very short works, while the Bare Essentials Play Reading series features developmental readings of four new plays by state playwrights: “The Rock and the Hard Place” by Emily McClain, “Pas de Deux” by Sarah Swiderski, “Water Boyz” by Kwik Jones and “The Other Bones” by Beverly Sylvester.
Credit: Courtesy of Essential Theatre
Credit: Courtesy of Essential Theatre
Essential has helped launch the careers of playwrights such as Atlanta-based Topher Payne and Decatur-born Lauren Gunderson. Jordan Pulliam’s “Bat-Hamlet,” produced in 2012, has since gone on to more than 10 productions around the United States, and Gabriel Jason Dean’s “Qualities of Starlight,” after its premiere in 2010, has had productions in Austin, Texas, and in Washington, D.C.
Hardy founded Essential Theatre. When he first came to Atlanta in 1986, he was interested in directing. Although he tried to get people to hire him, no one would because they didn’t know who he was. As a result, he started creating his own productions. When he began the company’s play festival in 1999, the idea was to stage a new play by a Georgia writer and hopefully attract some attention.
“We did that year after year, and it became a more important part of what we did,” he said. “As a playwright myself, I cared about that. I tried to shape things so that we provided playwrights the opportunities I’d like to have as a writer. It became more important until we only did Georgia plays. That has been a North Star for us.”
FESTIVAL PREVIEW
2023 Essential Theatre Play Festival
Through Sept. 3. Dates and times vary. Free to $28 per performance. 7 Stages Theatre, 1105 Euclid Ave. NE, Atlanta. 404-212-0815, essentialtheatre.com.
::
Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theatre Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband, Craig, and dog, Douglas.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
MEET OUR PARTNER
ArtsATL (www.artsatl.org), is a nonprofit organization that plays a critical role in educating and informing audiences about metro Atlanta’s arts and culture. Founded in 2009, ArtsATL’s goal is to help build a sustainable arts community contributing to the economic and cultural health of the city.
If you have any questions about this partnership or others, please contact Senior Manager of Partnerships Nicole Williams at nicole.williams@ajc.com.
