Julie Marie Myatt's THE HAPPY ONES concludes NewSCRipts Season at South Coast Rep

South Coast Repertory's final NewSCRipts reading of the 2008-09 season will be The Happy Ones by Julie Marie Myatt. Directed by Oanh Nguyen and commissioned by SCR, The Happy Ones is the 108th play to receive a staged reading as part of SCR's venerable play reading program. Myatt's My Wandering Boy received its World Premiere production at SCR in 2007 as part of the Pacific Playwrights Festival. The NewSCRipts reading of The Happy Ones will take place on March 2 at 7:30 p.m. on the Julianne Argyros Stage. Tickets are $12 each and may be purchased online at www.scr.org, by phone at (714) 708-5555 or in person at the SCR box office.

In The Happy Ones, Walter Wells, hardware store owner and family man, feels that Orange County in 1975 might just be the happiest place on earth. But his own contentment evaporates in an instant when calamity strikes. The blow is so swift and brutal that he has no desire to try to put the pieces of his life back together again, and his friends, Gary and Mary Ellen, don't know how to help him. But then an unexpected and uneasy relationship develops between Walter and a man named Bao Ngo, who has carried his own tragedy with him from his homeland in Vietnam to his new home in Little Saigon. Across a cultural divide, they each look to the other for a way back - if not to happiness, then at least to peace.

Julie Marie Myatt's play My Wandering Boy was featured in the 2007 Summer Play Festival in New York City after its SCR premiere. Her play Someday was commissioned by and premiered as part of Cornerstone Theatre Company's Justice Cycle. Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter premiered at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and a tour of that production went on to the Kennedy Center as part of the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays. Boats on a River was commissioned by and premiered at the Guthrie Theater, was a finalist for The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and was recorded for the LA Theatre works radio play series. Her ten-minute play, Mr. and Mrs. premiered at the 2007 Humana Festival. The Sex Habits of American Women was produced by the Guthrie Theater, among others, and premiered at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. Her work has been developed or seen at Denver Center Theatre Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Cherry Lane Theatre, A.S.K. Theatre Projects, LAByrinth Theater Company, among others. Myatt has received a Walt Disney Studios Screenwriting Fellowship, a Jerome Fellowship at the Playwrights' Center and a McKnight Advancement Grant. She is currently working on commissions for Denver Center Theatre Company, ACT Seattle, and Roundabout Theatre Company.

The annual NewSCRipts series of three Monday evening play readings by emerging and established playwrights was launched in 1985 as a way to bring the audience into the process of creating new work. After each public reading, audience members engage in lively exchanges with the playwright and become active participants in the play's development, providing invaluable feedback for the writer. Plays selected for the NewSCRipts series have earned six Pulitzer Prize nominations with Margaret Edson's Wit winning the prize in 1999.

South Coast Repertory's NewSCRipts series of play readings is generously underwritten by Elaine J. Weinberg. Orange Coast Magazine is the Media Partner.

TICKETS to the NewSCRipts reading of The Happy Ones can be purchased online at www.scr.org, by phone at (714) 708-5555 or in person at the SCR box office. NewSCRipts tickets are $12 each and include audience discussions with the playwright and dramaturg.

LOCATION: South Coast Repertory is located at 655 Town Center Drive in Costa Mesa, at the Bristol Street/Avenue of the Arts exit off the San Diego (405) Freeway in the Folino Theatre Center, part of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. Parking is available off Anton Blvd. on Park Center Drive.

COMING UP: Goldfish (3/15-4/5), Our Mother's Brief Affair (4/3-5/3), Emilie - The Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life at the Petit Théâtre at Cirey Tonight (4/19-5/10), Collected Stories (5/15-6/14), The Brand New Kid (5/29-6/14).

Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory, under the artistic direction of David Emmes and Martin Benson, is widely recognized as one of the leading professional theaters in the United States. Founded in 1964, SCR is committed to theater that illuminates the compelling personal and social issues of our time, not only on its stages but through its education and outreach programs. While its productions represent a balance of classic and modern theater, SCR is renowned for its extensive new play development program, including the Pacific Playwrights Festival. Of SCR's more than 400 productions, 108 have been world premieres with subsequent stagings achieving enormous success across America and around the world. SCR-developed works have garnered eight Pulitzer Prize nominations with Margaret Edson's Wit winning the prize in 1999 and David Lindsay-Abaire's Rabbit Hole in 2007. Located in Costa Mesa, California, in 2002 SCR opened the Folino Theater Center, an expanded three-theater complex that includes the 507-seat Segerstrom Stage, the 336-seat Julianne Argyros Stage and the 94-seat Nicholas Studio.