Baltimore Playwrights Festival Announces Play Reading Marathon, 2/25

 The Baltimore Playwrights Festival (www.baltplayfest.org) announces a public play-reading marathon to take place on Saturday, February 25^th, at Red Branch Theatre, 9130-I Red Branch Road, Columbia, MD 21045, (410) 997-9352, www.redbranchtheatre.com.  Beginning at 11:00 a.m. plays to be read are The Breath of Enceladus by Scott Gilmore, followed at 1:00 p.m. by The Luckiest Girl by Kitty Felde and at 3:00 p.m. by The Plataeans by Alex Gammon.  After each reading there will be a discussion of the script with the playwright, director and actors.  The event is free, and the general public is encouraged to attend.

The plays are described as follows: "Samy, an introverted gay University Professor of Algerian descent, is pushed into the world of online dating by his well-meaning friends.  Samy’s ex-boyfriend and best friend, Jamie, throws himself into the ever evolving gay cyber culture with abandon. Their friends, Mo and Trish, a lesbian couple, struggle with their convictions and the legal limitations imposed on their relationship.  Samy’s cousin Loundja’s work as a global human rights activist makes her acutely aware of her loss of privacy. The Breath of Enceladus by Scott Gilmore is a tale of struggle, discovery and determination in the brave new world of courtship, sex and terror.

"Scott Gilmore is a member of Actor’s Equity and British Equity. Scott has been acting professionally since the age of six, directing since the age of twenty and was Artistic Director of the Waterfront Playhouse in Key West for many years. After studying in New York, he currently lives in Takoma Park, Maryland and is focused on playwriting. He has directed many productions in Key West, London and regionally throughout the U.K.  

"The Luckiest Girl, by Kitty Felde, tells the story of Tahira, who is moving to Holland with her Gran, an attorney for the United Nations International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.  The move is difficult – Tahira is shorter than the other kids, she doesn’t speak Dutch, and then she discovers there’s no American-style Christmas in Holland.  Instead of jolly old St. Nick, kids wait for Sinterklaas – a bishop who arrives from Spain on a boat.  The Sint’s companion is the politically incorrect jester in blackface Zwarte Piet.  Tahira – like all the Dutch kids - falls in love with Piet.  Her grandmother is horrified.  Tahira and her grandmother battle over stereotypes and tolerance, and ultimately, over Gran’s decision to separate Tahira from her drug addicted mother.  

"By day, she covers Capitol Hill for public radio.  But in real life, Kitty Felde is an award-winning playwright.  Plays include a courtroom drama about the Bosnian war, A Patch of Earth, winner Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition; an adaptation of a trio of short stories by Nikolai Gogol, Gogol Project, winner 2009 LA Drama Critics Circle Award; even a one-woman show with a ghost Alice, an evening with the tart-tongued daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, winner of the Open Book/Fireside Theatre Playwriting Competition. Alice played to sold out houses at Washington's Capital Fringe Festival last summer.  Felde co-founded Theatre of NOTE in Hollywood and ran the playwriting program at HOLA Youth Theatre in Los Angeles.   

"Why do we honor dead soldiers? Is a country's history its virtue? Alex Gammon explores these questions in his play The Plataeans.  After a long siege, the citizens of Plataea surrender themselves and their city to the Spartans. The Plataeans soon realize that the surrender parley is in fact a capital trial they cannot win. When the hated Thebans arrive to press the case for the destruction of the city and the deaths of its people, the trial becomes an open-air courtroom argument over the use, and the usefulness, of the past.

"Alex Gammon grew up in Northern California and graduated from St. John’s College in Annapolis.  He has been a gas station attendant, a mosquito control field inspector, and a fourth grade teacher.  He lives in Baltimore with his wife and their son and their cat.  There are a few places he’s lived that he likes better than Baltimore, and several that he likes worse.  The Plataeans is his first play."

The Baltimore Playwrights Festival has presented 273 scripts by 165 playwrights, produced by 25 different companies, over the past 30 Years.  Our mission is to provide an environment that nurtures the talents of Maryland and DC playwrights through public readings, discussions, critiques and workshopping of new plays. Our summer season is devoted to the presentation of these newly developed works to area audiences in cooperation with local area theaters.  Further information can be found at www.baltplayfest.org.

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