Middlebury Acting Company Presents Third Annual Play Writing Festival

Middlebury Acting Company will present its  third annual New Play Festival. Out of an open submission process that attracted writers from across the state, a reading panel made up of local theater professionals has selected three outstanding new plays to present in this year's festival. Each play will be given a rehearsed, staged reading featuring some of Vermont's finest actors.

This year, the festival moves from the Tent at Swift House Inn to the Black Box theater at the Hannaford Career Center.  

Featured in this year's festival is Aristotle's King, a new play by Middlebury College Associate Professor of Theater, Dana Yeaton and his former student Colston Merrell. On a hissing summer day in ancient Athens, Aristotle leads his students deep into the forest with an urgent secret: Alexander the Great has died. Now the philosopher must flee for his life -- the victim of shifting political tides. In the fever dream of his escape, Aristotle relives the three tumultuous years he served as tutor to the boy who would conquer the world. As that world reckons with Alexander's legacy, Aristotle and his students are left to reckon with his own.

Also featured is a powerful new play by Burlington writer Susan Palmer, Watershed, inspired by the floods last summer in Montpelier.  While sheltering in a church, 16-year-old Charlotte grows increasingly anxious about the safety of a friend whose home is flooding. Determined to act, she enlists the help of a troubled stranger at the shelter and together they drive out into the flood. Her disappearance sparks panic in her mother and sets off a chain of events more frightening than the flood itself.

And last but not least we have The Hands of the Mother, by Karina Jutzi of Benson, Vermont, an imaginative, modern exploration of the Demeter/Persephone myth. When Persephone meets "H" at a bar and goes back to his place, she gets entranced by the dark beauty of the underworld and the sexy, troubled alcoholic who lives there. Her Mother, meanwhile, goes on a quest with an eccentric private detective to find her.

Join the playwrights, actors and directors to discuss the works in progress, gaining insight into the process of play creation and helping the playwrights by offering your responses in moderated discussions after the readings, if you so choose. Audience can buy tickets for individual plays at $15 or a Festival Pass for all three plays at $40.  Student prices also available.

Tickets are available at the Town Hall Theater Box Office: 802-382-9222 or online at: townhalltheater.org.

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