Next meeting of Kentucky Playwrights

The new year is here. So resolve to join us this year in supporting new works for the stage. Kentucky Playwrights Workshop's first meeting of 2012 will be held this Sunday-- January 8, 2012-- from 2-5 pm at Common Grounds in Lexington. If you have questions or concerns please email us at ky.playwright@yahoo.com See you on Sunday!

Frog’s Milk/Pump Works: An evening of …amphibians and septic tanks, stalled lives and jump starts…

Louisville) – The shadow of the frog that needs to be milked appeared in Nova Scotia and is about to appear at the Rudyard Kipling. A new theatre group, Frog Pump Productions, heads to the stage with an evening of amphibians and septic tanks, stalled lives and jump starts.

Performances of Rebecca Henderson and Heidi Saunders’ original contemporary play, FROG'S MILK/PUMP WORKS, are January 20, 21, 26, 27 and 28 at 7:30 p.m., and a 2:30 p.m. matinee on January 22, at The Rudyard Kipling Theater, 422 West Oak Street, Louisville 40203. Ticket prices are $15. Directed by Keith McGill, Frog’s Milk/Pump Works showcases actors Rebecca Henderson, Pattie Crawford, Jeremy Sapp, Tom Dunbar, and composer and keyboardist Frank Richmond. For tickets call 502-267-6915 or contact frogpumpproductions@gmail.com. To reserve dinner before the show, call The Rudyard Kipling at 502-636-1311.

You do not need to be a frog-loving plumber to enjoy the show. Through the use of comedy, the play explores timeless themes of loss, grief, and the poignancy of hope. Three people meet over a septic tank and wind up filling more than the hole in the ground. “We meet these people at the point where their lives are about to change forever,” says director Keith McGill.

Playwright Heidi Saunders' win 2010 Kentucky Theatre Association was recognized as one of Kentucky's best playwrights that year; she has had staged readings at the South-eastern Theatre Association's annual meeting and at Alice Lloyd College. Rebecca Henderson’s work has been workshopped at Natasha's Theatre in Lexington to great acclaim. Both playwrights are members of the Kentucky Playwrights Workshop.

Frogs’ Milk/Pump Works by Rebecca Henderson and Heidi Saunders: January 20, 21, 26, 27, 28 at 7:30 PM, matinee January 22 at 2:30 PM. All performances will be presented at: The Rudyard Kipling Theatre, 422 West Oak St. Louisville, KY 40203

Admission $15

For tickets only contact frogpumpproductions@gmail.com or 502-267-6915

For dinner before the show and tickets call 502-636-1311

KPW's on FACE BOOK and other announcements

We're on Face Book now. Just search for Kentucky Playwrights Workshop (KPW) and check us out!

Have news of interest to Kentucky playwrigts? Post it on our Face Book page.

The next meeting of KPW will be Sunday January 8th from 2-5 pm at Common Grounds in Lexington.

Want to join KPW? Send a check for $10 made out to KPW to PO Box 55222 Lexington, KY 40555

KPW New Play Contest Announced

The Kentucky Playwrights Workshop is holding a KPW New Play Contest. Deadline for submissions is midnight February 15, 2012. Up to seven new plays will be selected for a community reading in June of 2012 as a part of the Second Friday program at Berea Arts Council. In September 2012 a staged reading of the winning plays will be produced at Berea Arena Theater.

Any Kentucky Playwright Workshop(KPW) member is eligible to submit one ten-minute play. Any Kentucky resident or student attending a Kentucky college may become a member by including a $10 check, made out to KPW, with their submission.

According to contest coordinator, Trish Ayers, "One of the primary reasons for holding the contest is so that we can attract new members. Consequently, we are seeking outside judges and have arranged for public readings of the winning plays."


KPW New Play Contest Rules, 2012

1. Each member may submit one new ten-minute play with two to four characters which has not been published or fully staged. The entry should be emailed or postmarked by February 15, 2012. Each submission should include:
a. A cover page attached with a paper clip to the script which includes title of play, playwright name and contact information. Electronic submissions include this as a separate attachment.
b. One page with character descriptions
c. Maximum of ten pages of dialogue in standard play submission format (12 pt. Courier) the title of the play included on each page.
d. The title of the play included on each page of dialogue
e. Page numbers on each page of dialogue with the exception of the first page.
f. Only include name and contact information on cover page
2. Electronic or postal submissions will be accepted
a. Please submit electronic submissions in PDF or Microsoft Word to: ky.playwright@yahoo.com
b. Please submit postal submissions to: KPW, PO Box 5522, Lexington, KY 4055
3. Scripts will not be returned
4. Submissions that do not follow these rules will not be considered.
5. Decisions of the judges are final.

Louisville Review Seeks 10-Minute Plays

The Louisville Review, a literary magazine published by faculty of Spalding University, is currently accepting playwriting submissions for a special Kentucky Writers edition. Please send your ten-minute plays or short one-acts to Amy Attaway, guest editor, at amyattaway@gmail.com. You may also submit online at http://www2.spalding.edu/louisvillereview/submissions/.

Writers must currently reside in Kentucky, or be from Kentucky, but the plays needn’t be about Kentucky. Plays must be previously unpublished, but it’s fine if they have been produced.

The submission deadline is November 1. Payment is in copies of the publication. The Kentucky-only edition will be published in winter 2012.

Kentucky Theatre Association Semi-Finalists Announced

The Kentucky Theatre Association has announced the semi-finalists in its annual play contest:

And I Love You Richard by Osunnike Robin Scott
SUMBAHDEE by Donna Phillips
Taking Stock by Trish Ayers
View From the Pews by Clara Harris
The Mantau Maker by Elizabeth Orendorf
Feral Cats by Heidi Saunders
Crossing the Line by Toni Wiley
The Pictures by Gary Eldridge
Jonah the Reluctant Prophet by Richard Neumayer
Soldier's Christmas by Philip Paradis

Donna Phillips, Heidi Saunders and Trish Ayers are all members of the Kentucky Playwrights Workshop.

Agenda for Annual Meeting, September 11

As of now the AGENDA for Kentucky Playwrights Workshop annual meeting of members to be held on Sunday September 11th, from 2-5 pm at Common Grounds in Lexington, KY is as follows:

I. Call to Order

II. Reading of Minutes of the Prior Meeting

III Treasurer's Report

IV. Determination of eligibility to vote

V. Election of Board members
Nominees to serve on the Board for the coming year are:
Trish Ayers
James Brown
Bill McCann
Heidi Saunders

VI. Schedule of Meetings

VII. Meeting Dates

VIII. Dues for 2011-2012

IX Report of the President

X Other Business

XI Adjournment

Crimes of the Heart to Open Georgetown Season

Beth Henley's CRIMES OF THE HEART, will open the 2011- 2012 season at Georgetown College Theatre. The play will run October 21-23, 27-29. Performances are at 8pm in the Ruth Pearce Wilson Lab Theatre on the campus of Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky. Tickets are $3 for Students $3 and $5 for Adults For more information call 502 863-8162.

Berea Theatre to have World Premiere this Season

Berea College Theatre has announced its schedule for the 2011- 2012 season including the world premiere of a new play by Silas House:

Turandot, by Carlo Gozzi, October 28,29, November 2-5 2011

This is My Heart For You, by Silas House, February 22-16, 2012 (World Premiere production)

Cabaret, by Joe Masteroff, music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, April 13, 14, 18-21, 2012

All productions will be on the campus of Berea College, Berea, Kentucky.

Ten-Tucky Festival Opens August 17th

The Bards Town's Ten-Tucky Festival of Ten-Minute plays is a showcase and celebration of Kentucky artistry. The festival features eight (8) plays by eight (8) Kentucky playwrights. The plays feature Kentucky directors and actors...all in the only Kentucky theatre dedicated to the production of new work.

Festival show dates are August 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26 and 27; all shows begin at 7:30 PM.

The Bards Town is loctated at 1801 Bardstown Road in the heart of Louisville, KY's Highlands neighborhood.

In Brian Walker's Neighborly Do's and Don'ts, a woman is more than a little upset about the constant disappearance of her Girl Scout Cookies.

In Nancy Gall-Clayton's Encounter at the Ink Spot, a guy walks into a bar. He's a writer. She's a bartender. Let the pursuit begin.

Over, by Alex Lee Morse, brings together two childhood friends who have completely lost touch.

Disappearances, or The Groom's Shoes, by Nadeem Zaman, finds a wedding party with no groom. Only his shoes remain. Is this cold feet, or something more?

In Patrick Wensink's The Internet President, two bitter rivals debate as they strive to be elected president of the Internet. The fate of the Internet hangs in the balance.

Tom Kerrigan's The Intruder sees a young husband out looking for a lost pet, his wife making it painfully clear that he will not return until the pet is found. This young husband, though, finds a way to remain comfortable in this search.

In Andrew Epstein's Wedding for Godot, Didi and Gogo have found themselves as invited guests to Godot's wedding...if he ever shows up.

And rounding out the festival is Doug Schutte's Love Religiously, where Adam and Eve seek marriage counseling, much to Adam's dismay.

Announcements!

Saw CIVILIAN last night at the University of Kentucky's Guignol Theatre. Final dress was awesome! If you care going to be in New York for the NYC Fringe Festival then you absolutely have to go see CIVILIAN, it will absolutely blow you away.

The next meeting of KPW will be this Sunday, August 14th at Common Grounds in Lexington. The meeting will be from 2-4. Afterwards we'll go get some dinner.

The Kentucky Theatre Association's play contest closes August 31, 2011. Don't let the deadline slip up on you, Submit today.

CAGE to be given staged reading in NYC

Brian Walker's full length play Cage (or the other side of tomorrow)
was selected for a staged reading as part of Truffle Theatre Company's
1st Annual Truffle Hunt August 30th-September 4th, 61 Local, 61 Bergen

CAGE is a full-length paly, set in a Midwest city which does things exactly like
every other city in the United States does in the future and is
controlled by an organization called the Continental Operative Warrant
who have been responsible for lobbying the government and changing the
laws and running the new farms. All cows and pigs and chickens have
become extinct and the human race has turned to cannibalism in order
to satiate their need for meat. Laws have been enacted and prisons
transformed into new farms and anyone who breaks the law becomes food.

Wlaker is a member of the Dramatist Guild and the Kentucky Playwright Workshop. He lives and works in Louisville, KY.

Roots of the Bluegrass Contest opens August 7th

Kentucky Theatre Association opens its 3rd annual ROOTS OF THE BLUEGRASS playwright’s contest on August 7th. The contest is free to former and current Kentucky residents. All genres, including musicals (script and lyrics only), will be considered. Finalists will have their plays presented as staged readings during the KTA convention in November. The winner will receive a $250 prize. Last year’s winner was C.T. Hettinger of Louisville. Further information and guidelines can be found at our website: http://theatreky.org or by e-mail at: bill.forsyth@att.net .

Congratulations to Shan Ayres

Shan Ayres, a founding member of KPW and its first Board Secretary, has been appointed Director of Theatre and Program Coordinator for the Berea College Theatre. So, in addition to teaching and designing he will also be Berea's production manager and department chair. Consequently, while Shan intends to remain a member of KPW he has said that he would not be able to serve another term as Secretary. Best wishes and Congratulations Shan!

Len Cuthbert to have plays published

Len Cuthbert, the Canadian playwright who wrote Enigmatic Lucidity that was staged in Midway, KY as part of KPW's Midway Festival of New Plays in 2009, was staged along with two other “Bob & Angelina” plays-- at the London Fringe Festival in June 2011. The collection of three ten-minute plays has since been accepted for publishing and marketing by Big Dog Publishing in Florida. ,

Congratulations to Lawrence DuKore!

Lawrence DuKore's 20 minute one-act play, Stained Glass, ran in repertory at the off-Broadway Metropolitan Playhouse during June 2011. STAINED GLASS is the story of a disabled African American combat veteran and his lady friend, a white artist who works in stained glass. They live on the Lower East Side and have divergent attitudes about dealing with a destructive black teenager who continuously throws rocks at the artist’s stained glass windows. The problem solver turns out to be an unlikely third party with a practical, realistic solution to the problem: inclusion rather than exclusion.

Mr. DuKore's play The Day that Brando Died was produced by Kentucky Playwrights Workshop, Inc. as part of it's 2009 Midway Festival of New Plays.

AUGUST Meeting of KPW; Civilian TIX on Sale

The August meeting of the Kentucky Playwrights Workshop, Inc. will be held Sunday August 14, 2011 at Common Grounds Coffee House, Lexington, from 2-5 pm. Anyone interested in the development of new work for the stage is invited to attend.


Tickets for CIVILIAN, which will be presented as part of the New York International Fringe Festival 2011-- at The Bleecker Theatre 45 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012-- went on sale July 22, 2011. Get your tickets today! Don't miss this opportunity to see University of Kentucky students perform OFF BROADWAY!

Performances are: SUN, August 14 @ 7:30p; WED, August 17 @ 5:15p; SAT, August 20 @ 2:00p; TUE, August 23 @ 9:00p; SUN, August 28 @ 4:00p

Civilian to be in NY Fringe Festival

Civilian A compelling documentary drama, Civilian, based on the riveting oral history interviews of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will premiere at the 15th New York International Fringe Festival. The play, by the noted playwright Herman Daniel Farrell III, tells the story of the tough transition from soldier to civilian.Farrell, co-writer of the Peabody Award winning HBO Film "Boycott" that featured Jeffrey Wright as Martin Luther King Jr. returns to the Fringe for the third time with this docudrama. Farrell’s play about George W. Bush, "ROME," premiered at the 2004 FringeNYC and his play "Portrait of a President" concerning Bill Clinton’s legacy won an Excellence in Playwriting Award at the 2002 FringeNYC.

In January of 2010 at the University of Kentucky, Doug Boyd, director of the Nunn Center for Oral History, working with veteran and alumnus Tyler Gayheart and Tony Dotson, director of the Veterans Resource Center, launched the oral history project "From Combat to Kentucky" in order to chronicle the stories of student veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Subsequently, Farrell, an assistant professor of theatre at the University of Kentucky, and students in his "Staging History" Theatre Department course, devised a verbatim theatre piece drawn from the oral history transcripts. The play Bringing It Home: Voices of Student Veterans premiered in April 2010 in the Armory on the University of Kentucky campus and was subsequently produced in November 2010 at Eastern Kentucky University and again at the UK Armory as part of the Veterans Day commemorations.

The play Civilian, by Farrell, incorporates additional interviews by student veterans and dares to address a current brewing problem in America. "Recently, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates expressed his concern that there is a growing divide between those who have served in the armed forces and the civilian populace,” notes Farrell. “This play closely examines the current fraught relationship between civilians and veterans while also conveying the heart-wrenching stories of men and women who served in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, returned home and have struggled to make the transition back to civilian life.”

The cast, crew and writer/dramaturgs of Bringing it Home: Voices of Student Veterans included: Kendrel Dickerson, Joe Fields-Elswick, Michael Fischer, Tanner Gray, Callie Hanks, Andrew Hill, Kara Strait, Maggie Howell, Alex Koehl, Natalie Nicole, Max Baron Reid, Brian Sprague, Kevin Sullivan, Emmanuel Thurman and Lindsay Warnick. Fischer, one of the eight actors featured in the production, is not only a theatre major but is a veteran of the war in Iraq.

The veterans depicted in the production are UK students Ian Abney, Jonathan Herst, Stephanie Murphy, Andrew Napier and Nathan Noble.
The FringeNYC production of civilian is being produced by the UK Department of Theatre Chair, Nancy Jones, in association with the Veterans Resource Center Director, Anthony Dotson, the Nunn Center for Oral History Director, Doug Boyd, and the College of Fine Arts Dean, Michael Tick.

Tickets go on sale July 22, 2011:

New York International Fringe Festival 2011
The Bleecker Theatre
45 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012

At Lafayette Street. One block north of Houston Street and one block east of Broadway.

SUN, August 14 @ 7:30p; WED, August 17 @ 5:15p; SAT, August 20 @ 2:00p; TUE, August 23 @ 9:00p; SUN, August 28 @ 4:00p

KTA's 3rd Annual Roots of the Bluegrass Playwriting Contest

The Kentucky Theatre Association's (KTA’s) 2011 ROOTS OF THE BLUEGRASS playwright’s competition starts July 1. In addition to KTA's annual contest which is open to all Kentucky playwrights, the expanded version includes a new 10 minute play category for Kentucky high school and college students 22 years of age and under. The contest is free to all Kentuckians, including out-of-state residents, who resided in Commonwealth for a minimum of three years.

For the general competition, single or multi-act full length scripts are preferred. All genres will be considered (libretto, book or text only for musicals). Scripts should not exceed 120 pages. Plays that have had a fully staged production will not be considered.

The student category is limited to ten minute plays only, but students with full length scripts may compete in the general contest open to all age groups.

A cover or contact sheet with title, name and address must be included. The script itself should not include the name of the playwright, but it is helpful if the title is listed on each page.

Electronic submissions are encouraged in either a PDF or MS Word format. US mail delivered scripts must have a SASE if you wish it returned.

Semi-finalists will be announced in October. The three finalists in the general admission contest will receive staged readings and awards at the KTA convention in November. The winner will receive $150, 1st Runner-up $75 and 2nd Runner-up $50. Student finalists will receive plaques at the student awards ceremony that concludes the competition. The student winner will receive $100, 1st Runner-up $50 and 2nd Runner-up $25.

Electronic scripts and inquiries should be sent to bill.forsyth@att.net. Mail submissions should be sent to: Bill Forsyth, PO Box 24081, Lexington, Ky. 40524.

Final submissions date – August 31, 2011. Rules and guidelines can be found at: www.theatreky.com.

No July Meeting

There is no July meeting of Kentucky Playwrights Workshop, Inc. Have a good summer; see you in August.