THE THINGS WE DO Opens at Baltimore Playwrights Festival, 8/10

The Baltimore Playwrights Festival continues its Thirty-First Season with the August 10th opening of "The Things We Do . . . an evening of one act plays" at The Audrey Herman Spotlighters Theatre (www.spotlighters.org), 817 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21202, 410-752-1225. Featured will be Protest, by Adam Meyer, A Good Brain is Hard to Find, by Rebecca Wyrick, and Replay, by Mark Scharf, all directed by Lynn Morton.

Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m., and Sunday at 2:00 p.m., with two 8:00 p.m. Thursday performances on August 16th and 23rd. Tickets on Thursday are $10. Ticket prices for all other performances are $15 for adults, and $14 for Seniors (60+) and Students, with tickets available for purchase on-line at www.spotlighters.org, and at the door. There will be a Post-show Reception with director, playwrights and cast following the opening night performance on Friday, August 10th, and a Talk Back on Sunday, August 19th with director, playwrights and cast immediately following the matinee.

Protest, by Adam Meyer, asks the question, "What if someone organizes a protest and no one shows up?" That’s the dilemma faced by Lizzie, who shows up to speak out against something called “flerbing,” and finds that the only other protester is a musician namEd Tyler. But the more Lizzie opens up to him, the more she finds herself realizing that she may not be as committed to the cause as she’d like to think.

Adam Meyer is the author of The Last Domino, which was hailed by Publishers Weekly as “a harrowing first novel [that] moves at a breakneck pace.” He has also sold more than two dozen short stories including an upcoming story in the 2012 Mystery Writers of America anthology Vengeance. He wrote and directed the independent feature film Two Fireflies, and has written and produced more than a hundred hours of television for Fox, CBS, the Discovery Channel and National Geographic. His one act plays have been performed in Baltimore and New York City.

InA Good Brain is Hard to Find, by Rebecca Wyrick, child genius Hannah West’s life is turned upside down when a stranger comes to town, but is he really a stranger? With a totalitarian government hot on her trail, Hannah tries to unravel the secrets of his criminal past… and must decide how far she will go for love.

Rebecca Wyrick’s playwriting credits include: Oakwood: Unplugged, Two Buildings/One Heart, and Streets and Alleys with Burning Coal Theatre Company in Raleigh, NC. Grim and The Universe Next Door with Run of the Mill Theatre in Baltimore. Newer Stranger with Glass Mind Theatre in Baltimore. A Good Brain Is Hard to Find appeared at Towson University as a workshop production in 2010. Her plays Ingenious Devices andThings in Jars received readings with the Towson Theatre Lab. She also premiered two plays, Theory and The Wake of Lydia Keating, with Towson’s 24-Hour Play Festival. Rebecca worked with Raleigh’s Burning Coal Theatre Company as a stage manager on the Southeastern premiere of Enron, Shakespeare’s Henry V: On Trapeze, Man of La Mancha, and several staged readings of plays by North Carolina playwrights. She also worked as a stage manager and literary intern with WordBridge Playwright’s Laboratory in 2009. She received a degree in Theatre from Towson University in 2010. Her original poetry has appeared in several literary journals, most recently including “Oh Hegel!” and “Alice” in Splash of Red Magazine. Rebecca is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. For more information, visit www.rebeccajwyrick.webs.com.

Every night, at 4:30 a.m., Josh awakens to find Leann silently watching and waiting for another chance to replay how a promising relationship ended stillborn in pride, misunderstanding and miscommunication. As the play unfolds, we come to question if Leann’s visits are real or if they are only replaying in Josh’s head. Replay, by Mark Scharf, is about the journey from regret and remorse to redemption in our shared struggle to connect to another human being before it’s too late.

Mark Scharf teaches Playwriting as a Guest Artist at the University of Mary Washington, has served as a Thesis Advisor for the Johns Hopkins University 2005/2006 M.A. in Writing program and has also served as Playwright-in-Residence for Theatre Virginia’s New Voices for the Theatre. He has an MFA in Playwriting from the University of Virginia and is a member of the Dramatists Guild. He has written over 30 plays, seventeen of which have premiered at various theaters in Baltimore as part of the BPF, starting in 1994. His award-winning plays have received readings and productions in throughout the United States, as well as in London, Beijing, Australia, Canada and Singapore, and many have been published by Brooklyn Publishing, Pioneer Drama, Original Works Publishing, and Heurer Publishing. A monologue from his play The Whispers of Saints appears in the 2011 Volume 3, Young Women's Monologues from Contemporary Plays, published by Meriwether Publishing, Ltd. For more information, visit http://sites.google.com/site/markscharfsite/.

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 their new plays. Our summer season is devoted to the presentation of these newly developed works in cooperation with local area theaters and production companies. Further information can be found at www.baltplayfest.org.

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