The 2nd Act Players’ mission is to showcase new talent. The Showcase marks the 2nd time this year the 2nd Act Players will be fulfilling that mission by presenting new playwright works. Earlier this year, we held our One-Act Play Festival that featured two one-act plays.
Audiences enjoyed those performances but we wanted to do more to showcase new talent, so we held a short-script competition early in 2017 and selected six winning scripts from the entries received. The 2017 New Playwrights’ Showcase will feature staged readings of the six winning scripts plus a bonus reading of a new 2nd Act Players’ Founder John N. Frank 10-minute play as well!
The six winning playwrights biographers (in alphabetical order):
Last year, Three Cat Productions incorporated The Termination of Cissy Snowflake into their production of The Other Side of Christmas, and this coming holiday season they will present his solo show, Christmas Carolyn, starring RjW Mays.
Scott is also part of the 2017-2108 Mastermind program with Ken Davenport, producer of Kinky Boots, Groundhog Day, and the upcoming Broadway revival of Once on This Island.
Lawrence Keller is a writer, director and teacher. He teaches playwriting at Lyons Township High School in LaGrange. Lawrence made his playwriting debut in 2015 at the annual Cherry Picking Festival in New York.
Other short plays include, Breaking Gnus in the Serengeti, A Lullaby for Irving and A Plague on One of Your Houses. He recently completed his first full-length play, Sins of the Fathers.
As a director his work has been seen at The Alliance in Atlanta. He is a two-time nominee for the Alan Schneider Award as well as a finalist for the TCG/National Endowment for the Arts Directing Fellowship. He lives in Oak Park with his husband Scott.
Her wayward youth was filled with dreams of opera stardom but somehow she ended up in Los Angeles working in movies and TV, mostly though not completely, behind the camera.
The 2017 New Playwrights’ Showcase will take play Sept. 23, a Saturday, at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 24 at 3:00 p.m. Tickets are only $10 in advance, $15 at the door. To purchase your tickets now, simply click this link.