Crish Barth One Act to be Produced in New York

"General Admissions," a one act play by Crish Barth, will be produced as part of New York's 2009 Strawberry One Act Festival. The festival runs August 15 - August 23, 2009; all performances will be at Theatre St. Clements 423 West 46th StreetNew York, NY 10036.

Mr. Barth is one of seven winning playwrights of the 517 Playwrights 2009 10-Minute Play Contest. His winning play in that contest, Hill Cattle, will be produced by the Kentucky Playwrights Workshop, Inc. in October 2009 at the Thoroughbred Community Theatre, Midway Kentucky.

Meet Maryland Playwright Steven Schutzman

Steven Schutzman, author of The Weight, is a playwright and fiction writer from Baltimore, MD. He is the author of dozens of published plays with more than 30 different different produced plays to his credit; productions of his plays have been mounted at such theatres as New Jersey Repertory, Cleveland Public, Baltimore Theatre Project and Revolution Theatre (Chicago).

The playwright's play "Normal Is A Country" was a finalist in this year's Actor's Theatre of Louisville's National Ten Minute Play Contest. That play was just produced in July at the Arts Center Live, 10 by 10 In The Triangle and will be published by the One Act Play Depot later in the year.

Mr. Schutzman's long one act "Tree Man" won first prize in the First Stage LA National One Act Contest/2004 and was recently produced by Team Venture Productions in Chicago.

For 16 years Mr. Schutzman was a resident playwright/teacher for Center Stage Baltimore's Young People's Theatre program. Currently he is a Resident Playwright/Teacher in the Maryland State Playwriting in the Schools Program. You can find out more about his work at http://mysite.verizon.net/stevenschutzman/

Playwright Kay Rhoads

Kay Rhoads, author of Last Church of Lost Souls, is a native of Iowa who spent her professional life as an administrator of programs and services at the state women’s prison. Retired now much of Ms. Rhoads' writing reflects the challenges and struggles of women who have not had the encouragement or opportunity develop a vision of their potential.

Ms. Rhoads has had plays produced in many US cities including her home town of Des Moines and has publishing credits in several anthologies. Recent productions include “Prison of Lost Souls” in San Diego, “From the Backseat” and “Date Night” in Williamsburg, VA.

“A Simple Matter of Fear”, produced in Des Moines in 2008 is now scheduled for a three week run in New York City in 2010

Playwright Thomas Pierce

Thomas Pierce, author of Almost Connect..., is a Seattle based playwright who is having a play produced in Kentucky for the first time. Previously, Mr Pierce has had productions of his plays mounted in Seattle and Spokane (WA), Portland (OR), San Francisco and Los Angeles (CA), Chicago (IL), College Station (TX), Charlestown (WV) and Columbus (OH). He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and Seattle Playwrights Studio. Mr. Pierce is an instructor in philosophy at South Seattle Community College, Seattle WA.

Meeting in MIDWAY on August 9th

The next meeting of 517 Playwrights will be held at the Thoroughbred Community Theatre, 127 Main Street, Midway on Sunday August 9th at 2:00 pm. The purpose of this meeting will to allow directors to look over the venue as an aide to them and for members of 517 Playwrights to meet the owner of the theatre to plan other aspects related to the production.

Presently, we have two directors signed up to direct 4 of the 7 plays; we are still looking for at least one, preferably two more directors. If you have an interest, please leave a comment or send a message to ky.playwright@yahoo.com giving your name and how we can contact you.

Lawrence DuKore: Legendary playwright?

Lawrence DuKore, author of The Day Brando Died, may well be legendary among playwrights because he has managed to make a living writing. His career began with the writing of the screen play for the Richard Pryor movie Greased Lightening. He followed this success with the teleplay A Mistaken Charity was produced PBS/American Playhouse and nominated for a Writers Guild of America award for best dramatic writing.

As a lyricist his songs have been recorded by Bernadette Peters and Chita Rivera.

Mr. DuKore has also written daytime tv serials: One Life to Live for ABC and Search for Tomorrow for NBC.

For Saturday morning television, he wrote the cartoon series, Thunder Cats and Silver Hawks. For somewhat older teenage girls, his novels, Never Love a Cowboy and Long Distance Love, were published by Bantam. The Boy Barrier and its French version, La Rivale were published by Scholastic.

Mr. Dukore is a member of the Actors Studio Playwrights/Directors Unit and the HB Playwrights Foundation (Uta Hagen/Herbert Berghof). His plays have been produced regionally and off-Broadway. Exploding the Swan had its world premiere at the Montauk Playhouse. His play, Spinsters, was presented at Tennessee Stage (Knoxville)and also at CenterStage in Greenville, South Carolina. More recently, Tennessee Stage presented his coal-mining play, Carry Me Back to West Virginia. Mr. DuKore has been a semi-finalist three years running in the American Globe Theatre Festival of One Act Plays. He was a finalist in the Heideman Awards competition at the Actors Theatre in Louisville for his one act play, When Men were Men. His one act play, The Day that Brando Died, was also a finalist in the Heideman Awards at the Actors Theatre in Louisville.

Mr. DuKore, the only one of our seven playwrights to have an agent is represented by the Susan Schulman Literary Agency: http://www.schulmanagency.com/

Meet Playwright Len Cuthbert

Len Cuthbert, the author of Enigmatic Lucidity, has been writing plays since the late 1980's and is the creator of Fridge Door Live! a summer theatre camp for kids and youth. He has had several plays produced and published. He lives with his wife and two children near London, Ontario, Canada. For more information about Len or to learn about his plays and career visit his web site http://www.lencuthbert.com/

Meet Crish Barth

Crish Barth is one of seven winners of this year's 517 Playwrights' 10-Minute Play contest. His play Hill Cattle will be produced October 9, 10 and 11 by the Kentucky Playwrights Workshop at the Thoroughbred Community Theatre in Midway, KY.

Crish is a San Francisco Bay Area based emerging playwright. Recent shows/awards include – 2009 Strawberry One Act Festival (New York), 2009 Salute UR Shorts Festival (New York), 2008 & 2009 Bay One Acts Festival, 2008 Best of PlayGround Festival, 2008 & 2009 SF Theatre Festival, 2008 & 2009 Short Leaps Festival (all in San Francisco), PlayGround 2008 Emerging Playwright Award, Ensemble Studio Theatre 2009 One Act Play Marathon Finalist (New York).

10-Minute Play Contest Winners!

The judges of this year's 517 Playwrights 10-Minute play contest have selected 7 winning plays by playwrights from Canada and the United States. More than 100 entries were received from as far away as Ireland, England and as close as Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky. The winners of this year's contest, listed alphabetically by playwright are:

Crish Barth, Orinda, CA, Hill Cattle
Len Cuthbert, Mt. Brydges, Ontario, CANADA, Enigmatic Lucidity
Lawrence DuKore, New York, NY, The Day that Brando Died
Leon Kaye, Hyde Park, NY, More Pasta
Thomas Pierce, Seattle, WA, Almost Connect....
Kay Rhoads, Ankeny, IA, Last Church of Lost Souls
Steven Schutzman, Baltimore, MD, The Weight

We are grateful for all who entered and who in doing so shared something of themselves with us. Those of us who judged the plays are also playwrights so we know how difficult it is to write, much less submit a play that others will accept or reject. Thanks go to all who put themselves out and took a chance by submitting to our contest. We appreciate the time and effort required to do so.

The seven winning plays will be produced at the Thoroughbred Community Theatre in Midway, KY October 9, 10 and 11th, 2009. The Friday and Saturday performances will be at night, the Sunday performance will be a matinee.

July 26, 2009

The next meeting of 517 Playwrights will be Sunday July 26, 2009 at the downtown branch of the Lexington Public Library. We will meet at a table near the window on the second floor. If you are a director interested in directing one of the 10-minute plays please join us. Or if you are an actor interested in biting into some meaty new plays, please come to the meeting. We will be discussing the selected plays, seeking out directors and planning for auditions. If any of this sounds like something you'd like to be involved with join us at 2:00 pm on July 26th.

Waiting for playwrights

Six of the eight playwrights who have had plays selected for production have responded and said that yes we could produce their shows. Once we have heard from the other two-- probably after the Fourth of July-- I will post the names of the winning plays and their playwrights on this blog along with a one sentence description of each plot. Check back.

Winners to be produced at Thoroughbred Theatre

The Thoroughbred Theatre in Midway, KY will host the winners of 517 Playwrights First 10-Minute Play Contest. Production dates will be October 9th 10th and 11th. The venue will seat only 80 people so you'll want to get tickets early for the opportunity to see the production of our contest winners. More information will be forth coming soon, but its not too soon to put the second week of October on your arts planning calendar!