Mad Horse Theatre's BY LOCAL Play Reading Series Returns This Weekend

Mad Horse Theatre Company will present its second year of its successful BY LOCAL reading series! In the course of its first year, BY LOCAL presented six original plays by six local playwrights to enthusiastic audiences. Theaters are now producing several of the plays presented during BY LOCAL, including Monica Wood's PAPERMAKER at Portland Stage Company and Callie Kimball's ALLIGATOR ROAD at Mad Horse Theatre. BY LOCAL has proven that audiences are interested in new plays by Maine playwrights, and the series has been instrumental in championing these fresh, vital new works.

"We were absolutely thrilled by the turnout and support that BY LOCAL received in its first year," says Brent Askari, Mad Horse company member and BY LOCAL co-organizer. "And we are excited to present six more plays to local theatergoers."

The first BY LOCAL readings of the second season will take place on the weekend of November 20-23, 7:30 Thursday-Saturday and 2:00 on Sunday.

All performances will be at the Hutchins School, 24 Mosher St., in South Portland.

DIGBY'S HOME by Brent Askari will run November 20 & 22, and HUMPIN' GLORY BAY by Karmo Sanders will run November 21 and 23.

Admission is pay what you can at the door, with a suggested donation of $10. For more information, go to www.madhorse.com, check out the Mad Horse Facebook page, or call 207-747-4148.

DIGBY'S HOME, a comedy written by Mad Horse company member Brent Askari and directed by Mad Horse artistic director Christine Marshall, concerns a Digby Preston, a prop comic who comes back to his small New England town after his first national television appearance, hoping to finally gain the validation that he felt he never received growing up. Things don't quite work out as planned.

Brent Askari has acted in theaters throughout Maine and narrates the nationally syndicated television program Animal Science, which was nominated for a national Daytime Emmy Award in 2014 for Outstanding Children's Program. Brent has had plays produced in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Connecticut, Maine, and Washington, DC. He was part of HBO's New Writers Project and has sold several screenplays to companies including Paramount Pictures, MTV, Marvel Films, Reveille Entertainment, Our Stories Films, Artisan Entertainment, and Langley Films. He is the author of the novel Not Ready For Prime Time (Carroll&Graf).

HUMPIN' GLORY BAY, a comedy written by Karmo Sanders and directed by company member Chris Horton, concerns a quirky bride and groom who desperately try to pull of a shotgun wedding on a small island off the coast of Maine.

Karmo Sanders is a playwright/screenwriter/actress/stand up comedian/librettist & lyricist. Well known in Maine for her Marden's television commercials, Karmo has spent the last six years touring her one woman stand up comedy show - "Birdie Googins, Accidentally Maine's Only Supermodel and Un-Registered Maine Guide." In 1995 Karmo, working with Steve Underwood and Jerry Sanders, wrote, produced and acted in their musical Radical Radio. With Brian P. Allen directing, Radical Radio opened Off-Off Broadway at the 91st Street Theatre and toured the Eastern Seaboard for the next four years. In 1999 Karmo was invited to attend Boston University, earning her Masters degree in Creative Writing under the tutelage of Nobel Prize Winner, Derek Walcott. In 2011 she co-wrote and was the solo actress in Sharyn Paul Brusie's film Face It which won honorable mention at both the Vancouver and Sarasota Film Festivals. In 2012 her play Homer was a finalist in the McLaren Comedy Festival. In July 2012, her musical Gold Rush Girls, co-written with Jerrry Sanders, opened at Cyrano's Theatre in Anchorage, Alaska to a 6 week sold out run.

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