Mad Horse Theatre Company Presents PAPERMAKER Reading Tonight

Mad Horse Theatre Company invites Southern Maine theatergoers to celebrate the New Year with its wildly popular BY LOCAL new play series. Mad Horse will present a staged reading of Monica Wood's play, PAPERMAKER, tonight, January 4, 7:30pm, at the Hutchins School, 24 Mosher Street in South Portland. This event was originally scheduled for December 15, but was postponed due to a snowstorm.

PAPERMAKER, directed by local director and Portland Stage literary manager Dan Burson, is based on Monica Wood's own novel Ernie's Ark. In the play, Ernie is on strike. Henry owns the mill. When their lives unexpectedly collide in the boiling-over town of Abbott Falls, Maine, the labor-management conflict takes a personal turn, exposing the combatants' frailty in the face of fatherhood, family, and the notion of a worthwhile life.

Monica Wood is a Portland writer whose most recent book, When We Were the Kennedys, won the 2012 May Sarton Award for best memoir by a U.S. or Canadian woman. Her novel Any Bitter Thing spent 21 weeks on the ABA bestseller list, and her book Ernie's Ark, on which the play Papermaker is based, has been a "one community" read in towns and cities throughout Maine. Her widely anthologized short stories have won a Pushcart Prize and been read on the NPR program "Selected Shorts," and her essays have appeared most recently in The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Parade, and Oprah Magazine.

Admission for this event is pay what you can, cash or check, at the door. The suggested donation is $10. For more information, go to www.madhorse.com, visit us on Facebook, or call 747-4148.