Found Stages Launches Second Wine & Reading Series At Dunwoody Nature Center

Found Stages and Dunwoody Nature Center are partnering to present a six-month "Wine & Reading Series" of new plays by nationally known playwrights who call Atlanta home.

This annual series runs at 2pm on the Second Sunday of each month from May through October. Admission includes a meet-and-greet with the featured playwright at receptions with wine and refreshments before and after a reading of their play.

"This series is about bringing artists together with audiences, and audiences together with each other," according to Found Stages Co-Founder Nichole Palmietto, who also directs the plays. "Our hope is to build community through a shared story and shared experience."

Each play will be read by some of Atlanta's most talented professional actors.

This year's line-up includes the following playwrights:

Sunday, May 12th- Lee Osorio (The Modern Prometheus, Alliance Theatre Reiser Atlanta

Artists Lab)

Sunday, June 9th- Edith Freni (The Rights of Men, Actor's Express Threshold New Play Festival).

Sunday, July 14th- Mark Kendall (The Magic Negro..., Alliance Theatre)

Sunday, August 11th- Danielle Deadwyler (The Ood, Synchronicity Theatre's Stripped Bare)

Sunday, September 15th- Margaret Baldwin (The Followers, 7 Stages)

Sunday, October 13th- Lee Nowell (Beyond Reasonable Doubt, Synchronicity Theatre)

"Atlanta has world-class playwrights who choose to make their life and art here," Palmietto said. "We curate the playwrights, but let them pick the plays. We invite writers - as storytellers - to choose the stories they want to tell."

Play readings often take place at theaters during the development of a new play, but the public is rarely a part of the process. Found Stages is thrilled to take readings outside the theater and bring them to the community.

These concert style readings have a similar effect as an audiobook, incorporating actors' voices and the playwright's words without costumes or props. Similar to a "table read" in film and television, readings are an exciting way to discover new plays before they are in theaters.

"Readings are an important to playwrights because they are able to see how an audience reacts to the play: when they laugh, when they lean in. This informs the playwrights' rewriting process," says Found Stages Co-Founder Neeley Gossett.

This is the second annual series in a partnership between Found Stages and Dunwoody Nature Center. In 2014, Found Stages' Beulah Creek led audiences to four locations within the Nature Center, guided by candles and song, to witness the story of two women at a 1930s Baptist camp retreat.

Found Stages is a nonprofit theater that seeks to build a sense of community by taking plays out of the theater and into real world spaces where people live and work. In 2016, Found Stages received the prestigious and highly competitive Alliance Theatre Reiser Atlanta Artists Lab, and in 2018, the company presented the hit, sold-outFrankenstein's Ball on New Year's Eve at the Highland Inn Ballroom. Learn more at foundstages.org.

Photo credit: Casey Gardner

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