Mad Horse Theatre Company Presents BY LOCAL This Weekend

Mad Horse Theatre Company will present the fifth installment of its popular BY LOCAL new play reading series. The series has established itself as a standard for bringing exciting, original scripts by Maine writers to theater audiences in the Greater Portland area.

BY LOCAL provides an opportunity for Maine playwrights to present their original full-length plays in front of Mad Horse's audience. Each selected play will be read twice over the course of a single weekend. A discussion will follow each reading. This two reading format affords a chance for the playwright to make changes based on audience feedback, then test their newly-edited work.

Mad Horse's April BY LOCAL series will take place on the weekend of April 9th-12th, 7:30pm Thursday - Saturday and 2:00 pm on Sunday. All performances will be at the Hutchins School, 24 Mosher St. in South Portland. DISCIPLINE by Gerard Bianco, will be read on April 9th and 11th. FROM AWAY by MK Wolfe, will run April 10th and 12th.

Admission is pay what you can, with a suggested donation of $10. Tickets are available at the door, cash or check only. For more information, visit www.madhorse.com, check out our Facebook page, or call 747-4148.

DISCIPLINE, directed by Daniel Burson, is an award-winning romantic comedy that has us spending two evenings in the apartment of Harold Jenkins, a man many would consider a nobody. Helpless against the powers that control his every hour, Harold rebels in the only way he knows how - sexual hyperactivity. Lilly, Harold's less-than-generous lady love, keeps Harold's sexual advances on a short leash, leaving the poor guy frustrated and essentially isolated. New possibilities emerge for Harold when he discovers a mysterious stranger sniffling on his stove in the middle of the night.

Gerard Bianco holds an MFA in Writing. He is the author of the award-winning mystery/thriller THE DEAL MASTER (2006) and DISCIPLINE: A PLAY (2012), which was a finalist in the Indie Excellence Book Awards (2013). His short stories have appeared in various literary journals and his lessons, exercises and advice on the art and craft of creative fiction have appeared on the web and in the book, "Now Write! Mysteries: Mystery Fiction Exercises From Today's Best Writers and Teachers." (Tarcher, 2011; Edited by Sherry Ellis and Laurie Lamson.) His latest book, A SHARP BEND IN THE ROAD: 17 INTRIGUING STORIES, was recently published in January, 2015.

In FROM AWAY, directed by Christopher Price, an impetuous promise made in childhood brings Kerstin to the upscale Cape Porpoise home of the best friend she hasn't seen in 20 years, to stand at her side as she weds. But secrets from long ago threaten to tear apart the tenuous stability of this most dysfunctional family, with hilarious and heartbreaking results, and Kerstin discovers the courage to face the greatest taboo of all.

MK Wolfe is a playwright and lyricist whose plays and musicals have been staged in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Jersey and Maine. Most recently, MK's Swedish Meatballs was part of The Maine Dish: A Feast of Plays About Food, a Maine Restaurant Week special event produced by Snowlion Rep in Portland. MK's musical The Sock Who Lost His Mate (book, lyrics) kicks off the 4th Annual New York Children's Theater Festival.

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