Dea Julien Joins 29th Street Playwrights Collective's QUEEN MAIR Reading

The 29th Street Playwrights Collective kicks off its inaugural New Works Series with a reading of QUEEN MAIR by Matthew Wells. The play, set ninety minutes before the start of Shakespeare's KING LEAR, is described by Wells as "a drama about the influence of King Lear's wife on his three daughters."

Directed by Courtney Wetzel (A Light Lunch), the cast includes Donna Jo Fuller (Wings) as QUEEN MAIR, Coley Campany (Good/Bad/Ugly) as Goneril, Desiree Maumus (Cupidity) as Regan, Déa Julien (Intimacy, Fan Girl) as Cordelia, and Ronnie Norpel (2219) as the Nurse.

"It's a play about secrets," Wells said. "Things the sisters believe are secrets, things only their mother knows, and the secret history of a world where raising even royal female children would have been the sole responsibility of the wife and mother. A world of which men have no conception. Pun intended."

Wells' plays have been presented at Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York, The Magic Theatre in San Francisco, and the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in New Orleans. His "what-if" play about a middle-aged Hamlet in his 50's, Countrie Matters, was presented at the great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha in 2015; his ten-minute play, Romeo & Rosaline, a comedy in rhymed couplets, was featured in the 2015 Red Bull Theater Short New Play festival; and his 9/11 play, Beautiful Day, was part of last January's nuVoices Festival at Actors Theatre of Charlotte.

The 29th Street Playwrights Collective is dedicated to developing the voices of emerging, mature playwrights through weekly craft discussions, and to fostering new work for the stage through public readings and workshop performances of members' works.

The reading will take place Monday, February 29, at 7PM, at the Bernie Wohl Arts Center at 647 Columbus Avenue (between 91st and 92nd Street). The reading is free of charge, and RSVP is requested through Eventbrite.