Baltimore Playwrights Festival Announces Public Reading Marathon, 2/26 at The Strand

The Baltimore Playwrights Festival (www.baltplayfest.com) announces the sixth public reading "Marathon" of their 30th Season, to take place on Saturday, February 26th at The Strand Theater, 1823 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland, 21201. Beginning at 11:00 a.m. five one-acts plays will be read, including Top of the Hour by Kitty Felde, The Rapier and the Rose, and The Unfinished Story, both by Steve Prevosto, The Chick Files by Sharon Goldner, and Protest by Adam Meyer. Each reading will be followed by a discussion of the script with the playwright, director and actors. The event is free, and the general public is encouraged to attend.

Top of The Hour, tells the story of a very bad day on the job: covering one of the nation's worst commuter train accidents. Kitty Felde has written nearly a dozen plays, which have been performed all over the world. She recently won the 2009 LA Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Adaptation of a trio of Nikolai Gogol short stories for the stage called Gogol Project. Felde has also won the Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition for her Bosnian war crimes play A Patch of Earth, which premiered at the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo. Co-founder and former managing director of Theatre of NOTE in Hollywood, Felde currently serves as a judge for Washington DC's Helen Hayes Awards. She currently resides in Washington, DC where she covers Capitol Hill for Southern California Public Radio.

In 1592, London, England, John Branch, a young man in his early twenties searches for the band of murderers known as The Rapier and The Rose. A clue left by his friend Stephen Pallon, one of the gang's victims, leads John to a notorious tavern named The Black Angel. There he meets Kit Marlowe, an intelligence agent and playwright, as well as a young female cousin of Stephen's, both of whom are also seeking information about the gang. In the course of their search, John finds love and nearly dies in a duel before finally trapping and arresting members of the murderous gang The Rapier and The Rose.

The action of The Unfinished Story centers around Arthur and Jerome who are augmenting their incomes from legitimate jobs by acting as bookies on the side. One evening, while counting the money they are to deliver to their boss, they are warned by Arthur's gang member son that they are about to be robbed, and that the thieves are already outside Arthur's house. Since their lives literally depend upon delivering that money - their boss will surely have them killed if they don't - Arthur and Jerome come up with a scheme to elude the would-be robbers by leaving the house as a couple, with Arthur dressing as the woman.

Steve Prevosto grew up in Ellicott City, Maryland. Presently, he lives in Carroll County where he teaches English at Francis Scott Key High School. During his free time, Steve writes plays and short stories. His one-act play, Play My Ballad with Love, was produced as part of the Baltimore Playwrights' Festival in 1987.

The Chick Files is a series of monologues about female troubles for curious audiences. They are for and about the estrogen card carriers in our lives --- mothers, daughters, sisters, girlfriends, wives, gal pals, and any other incarnation of the XX chromosome as she tries to navigate through this life.

Sharon Goldner was born & raised in Baltimore where she began her life's lunacy at an early age. The people, both transplants & natives, are found all over her writing. Her plays have appeared in Run of the Mill Theater's Variations Series (2009 & 2010) and in their inaugural North Avenue Series (2010). She is a 2011 finalist in NYC's Downtown Urban Theater Festival and a 2010 finalist with Pittsburgh New Works. Additionally, her colorful Baltimore stories have been published in literary journals across the country & in England. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee for writing. No letters of the alphabet are ever harmed in her work.

In Protest, two people meet at a protest where they are the only two protesters, and discover they may be more committed to each other than their cause.  Adam Meyer is the author of the novel The Last Domino, an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant YA Readers, and the writer/director of the award-winning independent feature film Two Fireflies. He recently finished his second novel, When She's Gone, and is in pre-production on a new film. He lived for many years in Silver Spring , MD, and is currently writing a History Channel project for Bethesda-based Half Yard Productions.

The Baltimore Playwrights Festival has presented 266 scripts by 158 playwrights, produced by 25 different companies, over the past 29 Years.

Further information can be found at www.baltplayfest.com.