Jim Leonard

Circle X Theatre Co. has announced the newest participants and mentors for its 2023-2024 Evolving Playwrights Group, a new play development program dedicated to supporting the development of ambitious, impossible new works for the stage by groundbreaking and provocative playwrights.

The New Harmony Project announced that it is now accepting applications for the 37th annual conference to be held May 22-June 2, 2024.

With support from The Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles, Circle X Theatre Co. has invited Los Angeles-based playwrights to apply to the 2023 - 2024 Evolving Playwrights Group (EPG).

Jim Leonard has published eight plays, including The Diviners, And They Dance Real Slow in Jackson, and Battle Hymn, with his theatrical honors including the Outer Critics Circle Award, an Ovation Award, the Dramatists Guild Award, and an LA Weekly Award for best play.

Directed by Ben Martin (Open Fist’s Under Milk Wood), the LA premiere of Anatomy of Gray is set for a November 19, 2022 opening at Atwater Village Theatre, where performances continue through January 21, 2023.

With support from The Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles, Circle X Theatre Co. presents: The Evolving Playwrights Group 2022 Live Reading Series

The New Harmony Project, an organization dedicated to supporting writers interrogating the complexity of hope, has announced that they will continue in-person programming with their 35th annual spring conference in idyllic New Harmony, Indiana.

The New Harmony Project, an organization dedicated to supporting writers interrogating the complexity of hope, has announced that they will continue in-person programming with their 35th annual spring conference in idyllic New Harmony, Indiana.

Circle X Theatre Co. has selected participants and mentors for the 2021-2022 Evolving Playwrights Group, a group for groundbreaking and provocative voices to dedicate their time, energy, and attention to developing ambitious, brand new plays.

Circle X Theatre Company invites Los Angeles-based playwrights to apply to our 2021-2022 Evolving Playwrights Group (EPG). The Evolving Playwrights Group is a group for groundbreaking and provocative voices in the theatre to dedicate their time, energy, and attention to developing ambitious, brand new plays-the plays that have felt 'impossible' to write.

Culminating its inaugural season, Circle X Theatre Co. will present the reading series from their Evolving Playwrights Group. Five emerging and mid-career playwrights, paired with mentors/playwrights in conversation, were challenged to create the play they were scared to write. This series celebrates those stories.

The intrigue that authenticity alone brings to a performance is enough to make any actor stop and study it like their life depends on it.

2020 has been quite the rollercoaster ride, huh?

This pandemic hasna??t just affected Broadway. Ita??s postponed and even cancelled performances nationwide. Community theaters had to close their doors.

Circle X Theatre Co. invites Los Angeles-based playwrights to apply to our emerging and mid-career writers' group. We seek writers who align with a shifting professional identity-that is, artists whose careers are on their way to becoming what they seek to be. We encourage playwrights to pitch the 'play they are scared to write,' the play that has been sitting in their imagination for some time or has come about in this moment of stillness and for whatever reason-impossibility of language, form, or subject-has not been written.

GOING DARK Part 17 features Choctaw High School Performing Arts Director Maryjane Burton. This exclusive interview series features out-of-work performing artists and their COVID-19 impact stories. In their own words, they explain the hardships faced during this uncertain time. These are the real human stories behind COVID-19. This is GOING DARK.

Lynn University's College of Arts and Sciences invites guests to weather the storm as the Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) in drama program presents Anatomy of Gray Nov. 20-22. When June's father dies in the late 1800s, she prays for a healer to come to the small town of Gray, Indiana. After a tornado passes, a man in a balloon blows into town claiming to be a doctor. At first, the doctor cures anything and everything, but soon the town's preacher becomes ill with a mysterious plague.

On a rainy night, The Diviners was presented by Wichita Community Theatre, a play written by Jim Leonard, Jr. and set during the depression era of a small town named Zion, Indiana. The play has a rich production history having been performed on the upper east coast during the year 1980 when it was first written for the American College Theatre Festival in Washington, D.C. Many theatres and high schools subsequently followed and produced The Diviners until of course Wichita Community Theatre decided to wisely include it into their current 2018-2019 season. The show has similar themes seen earlier in the season and centers mainly around the relationship of C.C. Showers, a former preacher, and Buddy Layman, a mentally challenged young boy whose mission is to divine or search for running water yet at the same time has fears of water himself.

People's Light presents For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday by two-time Pulitzer Prize Finalist Sarah Ruhl, featuring an all-star cast of Philadelphia favorites and directed by People's Light Executive Artistic Director Abigail Adams. Family is at the heart of Sarah Ruhl's imaginative and lyrical comedy-drama. Five middle-aged siblings crack jokes, argue politics, and mourn the death of their father over a bottle of Jameson. Ann, the eldest, reminisces about her star turn as Peter Pan at the local children's theatre fifty years ago, and leads her siblings on one final journey to Neverland, as they confront growing old and growing up. Tickets range from $30-$50. To purchase, call 610.644.3500 or visit www.peopleslight.org. People's Light is located at 39 Conestoga Road, Malvern, PA 19355.  

New York Stage and Film is thrilled to announce that its annual Winter Gala will honor playwright and Emmy award-winning actress Patricia Wettig (F2M, 'Brothers and Sisters,' 'thirtysomething') and Executive Producer/director/actor Ken Olin ('This Is Us,' 'Alias,' 'Brothers & Sisters,' 'thirtysomething'), and, in recognition for her years of dedication to New York Stage and Film, Artistic Director Johanna Pfaelzer, who is stepping down from her post at the end of the 2019 Powerhouse Summer Season.