Monday, November 29, 2010

Meeting Schedule for the first Quarter of 2011

There will be no meeting in December 2010.

Instead our first meeting of the new year will be Sunday January 23, 2011 at Common Grounds Coffee House in Lexington. The second meeting will be Sunday February 13th, also at Common Grounds. For March it would be good to get out of Lexington and hold a meeting elsewhere; city and location to be determined.

The January meeting will involve readings of members' plays in progress. If you have either a one act or full-length play that is ready (or will be ready) for reading please send a note to ky.playwright@yahoo.com so that your play reading can be scheduled. If you have a 10-minute or shorter play that you would like to have read, simply bring it to a meeting and it will be read as time allows.

In either February or March of 2011 we will schedule a public (music stand) reading of members' works at the Lexington Public Library Theatre. Watch the blog for more details.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

News Update

November has been an exciting and busy month for the Kentucky Playwrights Workshop, Inc. We held our first meeting/reading in Louisville at the Bards Town, 1801 Bardstown on November 14th from 4:30 to 7:00 pm. About thirty people were in attendance to hear readings of the plays selected as part of the Kentucky Festival of New Plays. Though the festival has been postponed in part because the theatre at the Bards Town is not yet ready, the reading was a great success. Audience members did readings of the 10-minute plays that will be performed at the Bards Town when it is ready, probably in spring 2011. Meantime playwrights and others in attendnace were able to hear some wonderful new scripts and eat some of the Bards' great food.

Upcoming in December is an event you will want to put on your calendar. Btuce Williams-- one of the founders of 517 Playwrights-- is directing the second production of his full-length play TIM: A CHRISTMAS STORY. TIM, an update of Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL, will be produced by the Georgetown Community Theatre at the Thoroughbred Theatre in Midway.

The performance dates and times are Friday and Saturday night the 17th and 18th of December at 7:30 and Sunday the 19th at 2:00. Tickets should become available soon at the ThroughbredTheatre.com website. They are $12 for adults ($ 15 at the door).

Thursday, November 11, 2010

More About Playwrights Whose Works Will be Read at The Bards Town

The rest of the playwrights whose plays will be read on Sunday November 14, 2010 at the Bards Town, 1801 Bardstown Road in Louisville, Ky are listed below:

Sara Ilyse Jacobson author of Nephrology is from Baltimore, MD. Other plays include Have Your Cake, The Heart is Hollow and Past Shadows Dark and Deep, which was selected as first runner-up in the 1999 Agnes Nixon Playwriting Competition. Her plays have been produced in Baltimore, Washington, DC and in New York City.

Bill McCann the author of There is No Wrigley Field is a graduate student in Theatre at the University of Kentucky, a founding member of the Kentucky Playwrights’ Workshop, Inc. and a co-founder of 517 Playwrights. Bill is also an actor who most recently appeared as Charlie Martin in On Golden Pond for Little Colonel Playhouse in Pewee Valley, KY

George J. McGee, co-author of Digging for Diamonds, is from Georgetown, Kentucky. He holds a B.F.A from Illinois Wesleyan University, in Drama, and a M.F.A. from Florida Atlantic University, in Acting and Directing. He is a Professor and Director of Theatre at Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky.

McGee was a member of the Chicago based sketch comedy group, ‘The American Dream’, and was the Artistic Director of the Palm Beach Children’s Theatre. He has appeared in film, network television, commercials and industrials. McGee is also an actor, performing as ‘Kentucky’s Greatest Statesman, Henry Clay’, for the Kentucky Humanities Council’s, Chautauqua program.

Louise Penberthy, the author of No More Than Reason, isan actor, playwright, and director. Recent productions include “Miss Hannah Comes Back” at Pierce College in Tacoma, Washington, and her short play “The Cougar in the Coffeehouse” in the Erotic Shorts Festival at the Little Red Studio in Seattle. Louise lives in Seattle with her husband and two cats. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild.

Brian Walker a Louisville based playwright,is the author of Linda and Kirk and the Mouse Incident. Brian is the artistic director of Louisville, Kentucky based Finnigan Productions and has written and produced several full length plays in the Louisville area, including: Smoke this Play, Great American Sex Play, dirty sexy derby play and ZOMBIE!. Walker is the creator and co-producer of Finnigan’s Festival of Funky Fresh Fun, an annual 10-minute play festival celebrating independent theatre artists in the Louisville area.

Brian was awarded the Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship Emerging Artist Award for playwriting by the Kentucky Arts Council in July 2010. He is a member of The Dramatists Guild, The Playwrights’ Center, The Kentucky Theatre Association The Kentucky Playwrights Workshop and the Theatre Alliance of Louisville.

Monday, November 8, 2010

About Our Playwrights

The playwrights whose plays will be read on Sunday November 14, 2010 at the Bards Town, a restaurant and entertainment complex on Bardstown Road in Louisville, Kentucky are listed below. The second half of the list of playwrights will go up later in the week. Please come out and support these playwrights whose work the Kentucky Playwrights Workshop, Inc. would like to produce as part of the Kentucky Festival of New Plays in the spring of 2011, at the Bards Town.

Shan R. Ayers, author of the play Draped in Honor, holds an MFA and is a Professor of Theatre at Berea College. He teaches courses in design, script analysis, theatre history and playwriting. Twice he has taught playwriting for the Kentucky Institute for International Studies summer program in Japan and will be again in the 2011 summer program in Italy.

Trish Ayers, author of the 10-minute play Judging Quilts in this year's festival is co-artistic director and resident playwright of Mountain Spirit Puppets with her husband Shan Ayers. Her plays have toured the United States and Japan. She has been a guest artist at Iowa State and Western Illinois University and has won numerous playwriting awards from the Appalachian Writers Association. Ms. Ayers originated the Kentucky Women Playwrights’ Seminar, which has twice been funded by the Kentucky Foundation for Women (KFW). Currently she is editing the full-length play, “Taking Stock” with funding from the KFW Artist Enrichment Grant. She is a member of The Dramatists Guild.

James Hamblin, co author of Digging for Diamonds is an actor, writer and director from Georgetown, Kentucky. He has a BA in Communications from Georgetown College, and spent 2 years in the MFA Acting program at the University of Florida. James has performed off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, and throughout New England. He has worked in independent film and television, and works as a writer, director, actor and teacher all over the country; regionally, James has worked with Lexington Children’s Theatre.

Rose-Mary Harrington, author of There is No Dash, is from Ashland, Oregon. She holds a B.A. from New College of Speech and Drama, England and an M.A. from the University of Arizona in Theatre/Playwrighting. Ms. Harrington's efforts have been generously rewarded, they run the gamut from Pulse Ensemble in New York to the Kennedy Center and to being awarded honors by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. Rose-Mary was the 2009 recipient of the Oregon Literary Fellowship in Drama. Rose-Mary is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

Friday, November 5, 2010

The next regular meeting of 517 Playwrights will be held in Louisville, KY at The Bards Town on Sunday November 14th, beginning at 4:30 pm, for the purpose of doing a reading of new 10-minute plays:

Draped in Honor, by Shan Ayers, Berea, KY
Judging Quilts, by Trish Ayers, Berea, KY
There is No Dash, by Rose Mary Harrington, Ashland, OR
Nephrology, by Sara Ilyse Jacobson, Baltimore MD
There is no Wrigley Field, by Bill McCann, Jr., Lexington, KY
Digging for Diamonds,by George McGee and James Hamblin, Georgetown, KY
No More Than Reason by Louise Penberthy, Seattle, WA

The Bards Town is a theatre, music venue and restaurant located in the Highlands neighborhood of Louisville at 1801 Bardstown Road (502) 749-5275. Come early and stay late to enjoy good food and fine short plays by Kentucky and other playwrights.