Winners Announced For The Naples Players Readers Theatre's Annual Playwright Competition

The Naples Players Readers Theatre "Evening of New Plays" contest is an annual event designed to give playwrights an opportunity to have their one-act plays presented to an audience in a staged reading. Each play must be the writer's own original work, not an adaptation, and not commercially published or produced, though it may have been work-shopped or presented in staged readings in other locations than Southwest Florida.

Winners were recently selected and announced ahead of a January 31, 2021 event when the works will be performed live. This year's plays and winners are "Mothers Mandelbaum" by Toby Armour, "Obits" by Romney Humphrey, and "Provenance" by Ian Patrick Williams. Limited tickets are still available, but due to COVID-19 safety restrictions, the theater will not be filled to capacity. Masks are required when inside the theater.

Toby Armour has spent much of her life in theater- as a stagehand with The Living Theater, then dancer, choreographer, company director, and now playwright. Her plays have been done in NYC, LA, Boston, New Haven, Atlanta, Denver, Key West, elsewhere in the US, as well as London, Scotland, and Ireland. She is a national award-winning (The Lewis Prize) playwright and Jerome Fellow, many of whose plays are based on oral history and stories of the community. Her play "Susan B. and Her Tennessee Waltz" Part 2, will be performed on the radio this March by Theater for the New City in NYC.

Romney Humphrey, a former media writer/producer and award winner, is a nationally produced playwright. In 2020, she had plays produced in Maryland, California, and Colorado. Her humor/memoir "How I Learned I'm Old" was released in 2019 and her book, "Women I've Loved - Friendships that Changed a Life" was released in January 2021.

Ian Patrick Williams shared the Chicago Emmy award for co-authoring the PBS teleplay BLEACHER BUMS, which was later adapted and produced as a M.O.W. by SHOWTIME. After moving to L.A., he worked for the not-for-profit organization Enrichment Works, writing and directing seven one-act plays that toured the LAUSD school systems. His play PROVENANCE was recently produced at Ensemble Studio Theater's One Act Play Festival.