MPF to Host Playwright-in-Residence Melinda Lopez

Acorn Productions, producers of the annual Maine Playwrights Festival (MPF), announces that they have received a grant from the Maine Theater Fund to support a residency in Portland by Boston-based playwright Melinda Lopez. The purpose of this residency is to assist playwrights with deepening their understanding of their craft by presenting an evening of public staged readings of MPF plays and a public playwrighting workshop during the rehearsal period for this year's festival. During her residency, Ms. Lopez will attend the staged readings of the festival plays in order to provide feedback to festival playwrights, as well as offering a free 3-hour long workshop in playwrighting for members of the public. Ms. Lopez's workshop will take place at the Maine College of Art (MECA) as part of a new partnership between MECA and Acorn designed to bring more theater arts educational programming into the community. Both the workshop and evening of staged readings will take place on Saturday, March 21st.

Over its first 13 years the MPF has become Maine's premiere incubator for developing new plays by local playwrights. The MPF's emphasis has always been on providing playwrights with the opportunity to hear their words come to life during a rehearsal process with a professional director and local actors, a process that culminates with fully-staged public performances at the St. Lawrence Arts Center, this year scheduled to take place from May 11 to 17, 2015. This year, Acorn received plays from 48 different Maine-based playwrights, making it one of the most competitive years to date. These scripts are currently being evaluated by the MPF reading committee, which is under the Artistic Director of Acorn co-founder Michael Levine and Daniel Burson, former Education and Literary Director at Portland Stage.

Melinda Lopez is the playwright-in-residence at the Huntington Theatre, Boston. She is the author of BECOMING CUBA, (Huntington Theatre Co, North Coast Rep) and SONIA FLEW (Elliot Norton Award Huntington Theatre, Steppenwolf, Coconut Grove Playhouse, the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, and many others.), as well as several other plays that have been produced around the country. Ms. Lopez was the first recipient of the Charlotte Woolard Award, given by the Kennedy Center to a "promising new voice in American Theatre." She has served as a panel member for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Cambridge Arts Panel, and has enjoyed residencies with the Huntington Playwriting Fellows, Sundance, the Lark, the New York Theatre Workshop and Harvard University. She teaches theatre and performance at Wellesley College, and playwriting at Boston University. She makes her home in Boston.

For more information, visit: www.acorn-productions.org.