SCR Announces 2012 Pacific Playwrights Festival Lineup

South Coast Repertory's Pacific Playwrights Festival (PPF) celebrates its 15^thanniversary this year with some pretty impressive numbers: By the time the festival closes, it will have given birth to 99 new plays by 78 different playwrights, almost all of which have gone on to full productions here or at theatres around the country. 

"Those are gratifying statistics," said festival co-director John Glore. "We're proud of what we've been able to accomplish in 15 years, and look forward to topping ourselves in the years to come."

This year's festival, which will take place April 27–29, will feature fully-produced world premieres by Steven Drukman, Adam Gwon and Octavio Solis and staged readings of brand-new works by Lauren Gunderson, Noah Haidle, Samuel D. Hunter, Kenneth Lin and Melissa Ross.

"The plays of the 2012 festival are powerful and stylistically diverse," said festival co-director Kelly Miller, "including an irreverent new drama by Noah Haidle, a timely tale of political intrigue from Kenneth Lin, compelling dramatic stories from Samuel D. Hunter and Lauren Gunderson, and a fierce comedy of urban manners by Melissa Ross."

Since its creation in 1998, PPF has grown into one of the leading festivals of new plays in the country, devoted to showcasing some of the best new work on SCR's radar, in hopes of generating lively conversation, future world premieres and subsequent productions for myriad playwrights. Over the years, the festival has helped launch some of the most prominent plays in the American theatre, including Donald Margulies' Shipwrecked! An Entertainment, Lynn Nottage'sIntimate Apparel, Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics, Rolin Jones' The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow and David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole, among many others.

Anchoring the 15th annual Pacific Playwrights Festival are the world premieres of Steven Drukman's The Prince of Atlantis, a tender and hilarious play about family, loyalty and love, and Adam Gwon and Octavio Solis' musicalCloudlands, a moving drama about a teenage girl who discovers her mother's secret life. 

The festival kicks off Friday afternoon with Kenneth Lin's Warrior Class, a suspenseful political drama about an ambitious congressman whose future never looked brighter-until his past catches up with him.

Following that is the comic drama You Are Here from Melissa Ross, a story about six (mostly) thirtysomethings wrestling with issues of love, work, parenthood and friendship. 

Beginning Friday night, festival-goers will have three chances to catch a new SCR commission: Lauren Gunderson's I and You, in which two young people spend a night unraveling the mysteries of Walt Whitman-and their own lives-as they work on a class assignment. 

Saturday morning brings a new play from 2011 OBIE Award-winner Samuel D. Hunter. The Few, set in Hunter's home state of Idaho, finds a trucker-turned-newspaperman returning to the woman he loved and left four years earlier. 

The festival wraps up Sunday with Noah Haidle's wildly imaginative portrait of three generations of a Michigan family. Smokefall takes its title from a T.S. Eliot poem.

"We're excited to share the plays we've found for the milestone 15^th annual Pacific Playwrights Festival," said festival co-director John Glore. "To mark the occasion we plan to populate the festival with as many of our favorite writers as we can, not just those whose work is on view, but also many others who have become important members of our artistic family."

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