Mobtown Playwrights Group Announces 2011–2012 Season

Over six weekends last season, the Mobtown Playwrights Group staged readings of three new plays by writers from Baltimore, Frederick, and the Eastern Shore, including Jessica McHugh, whose dark comedy Fools Call It Fate received a complete production at the Mobtown Theatre this summer. We are now pleased to announce our lineup of readings for the 2011-2012 season:

October 21-29: BRIGID OF IRELAND: A TRAGEDY, by Patricia Montley
December 2-10: IN THE RAMBLE, by Mardee Bennett
February 17-25: COME OUT AND SAY IT, by Erica Smith

All performances will take place at 8 P.M. at the Mobtown Theater, 3600 Clipper Mill Road, Baltimore, MD 21211. An audience "talk back" session with the playwright and cast follows each reading. Attend as many times as you can to experience how the play changes as a result of the workshop process and your feedback.

What is history and who gets to tell it? What is biography? How does folklore intersect

with fact? with faith? with politics? Brigid of Ireland, once the Celtic Goddess of Fire and Fertility, was co-opted by the Christian church and reduced to saint. Inspired by the mythology and folklore of this remarkable figure, BRIGID OF IRELAND: A TRAGEDY is the imaginable, though not historical, story of why a young druid abandons her heartfelt faith and reluctantly accepts Christianity.
Patricia Montley, a member of the Dramatists Guild, has had twelve plays published. Her plays have been given readings at the Kennedy Center, Baltimore's CENTERSTAGE, and the Abingdon Theatre, and productions at the Nebraska Repertory Theatre, the Manhattan Theatre Source, the Harold Clurman Theatre, the Nat Horne Theatre, and Baltimore's Theatre Project. Montley has taught playwriting at Chatham University, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Goucher College, and the Johns Hopkins University Odyssey Program. Her non-fiction book, In Nature's Honor: Myths and Rituals Celebrating the Earth (Skinner House Books), includes a chapter on Brigid's feast of Imbolc.

After leaving home at twenty-three, Chloe's bond with her mother, Jessica, is stronger than it has been in years. But when she returns to the Upper East Side for a visit, Chloe makes a discovery that will re-ignite long-suppressed tension between Jessica and her sister, Miriam. IN THE RAMBLE asks powerful questions about our attraction to power and what we're willing to do to stay in its orbit.

Mardee Bennett is a writer and an actor whose play Falling Debris was a finalist in the CENTERSTAGE Young Playwrights Festival, where it received a workshop. Other plays include A Pleasant Place To Be and When The Baby Comes. As an actor, his regional credits include The Studio Theatre, Signature Theatre, CENTERSTAGE, Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, and Olney Theatre Center. Awards: Two Helen Hayes nominations. Education: NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, Playwrights Horizons Theater School, and The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute. He is a proud member of Actors Equity. He currently resides in Baltimore.

Five people. Four pros. Three murderers. Two lovers. One miscalculation. Vale's day just got complicated. As he deals with the aftermath of a heist gone wrong, he sees his plans-and his life-fall apart before his eyes. In COME OUT AND SAY IT, forgiveness is not quite as simple as it seems.

Erica Smith has a B.A. in Theater from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her one-act plays about robots, sex, and the end of the world (though not all at the same time) have been performed at the Laurel Mill Playhouse, Greenbelt Arts Center, and the Vagabond Theater in Fells Point. Her short play "Making Your Rage Work for You" (formerly titled "Not One Single Thing") was selected for the MCTFA competition, and from there went on to the ESTA Regional Festival in Delaware.

The Mobtown Playwrights Group is dedicated to giving playwrights an opportunity and a venue in which to workshop and produce new plays for an audience committed to the process of new play development. Each season, three playwrights receive staged readings of a play they are in the process of developing. Each summer, one play that has received a staged reading will be selected to receive a full production at the Mobtown Theater in Baltimore.

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