Maine Playwrights Festival Announces 2016 Lineup

Acorn Productions, a non-profit organization dedicated to nurturing and developing the Southern Maine community of performing artists, has finalized plans for this year's annual Maine Playwrights Festival (MPF). This year's MPF is co-directed by MPF Founder Michael Levine and Daniel Burson, former Education and Literary Director at Portland Stage Company, joined by Playwright-in-Residence William Donnelly. This year, six scripts by Delvyn Case, Carolyn Gage, Jennifer Jensen, Richard Sewell, David Susman, and Bess Welden will be brought to life at the St. Lawrence Arts Center from May 4 to 7, 2016, with the latest installment of the 24-Hour Portland Theaer Project on Sunday, May 8th. Additionally, Burson and Donnelly will be offering a 3-hour Master Playwrighting Workshop on March 19 from 1 to 4pm at the Maine College of Art. More information about this year's MPF, including a sign-up form for the Master Playwrighting Class, is available on Acorn's website at www.acorn-productions.org.

Over its first 14 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 on Munjoy Hill in Portland. This year, Acorn received plays from almost 50 different Maine-based playwrights, making it one of the most competitive years to date. After several rounds of readings, the following scripts were selected to be a part of this year's MPF:

MEET THE AUTHOR, by David Susman
Romance blooms between a novelist and a reader-until a difference of literary opinion threatens everything.

NERDLORDS VS. THE THING UNDER THE BASEMENT, by Jennifer Jensen
A group of college students discover that they all have supernatural abilities and that there is a monster lurking underneath the campus, and they decide to work together to stop it.

OLIVE SHRINESHADE, by Richard Sewell
It seems Olive asked her daughter to come 420 miles just to open an urn, but was there another reason as well?

PLANCHETTE, by Carolyn Gage
During a nor-easter on the New Hampshire coast in 1879, two fourteen-year olds share their secrets about trauma they have survived and the deeper secrets about their sexual orientation and gender identities.

SOMETHING BLUE, by Delvyn Case
How can a Palestinian woman living in Gaza, separated by her fiancé living in the West Bank since their engagement three years ago and unable to get permission to travel to the West Bank for the wedding by three governmental authorities, be united with the love of her life?

WHATEVER YOU DECIDE, by Bess Welden
Fiercely independent American photojournalist Jamie Winter meets refugee kids all the time, but when Waleed, a shoeless, motherless teenager steps off the boat and in front of her lens, she is suddenly forced to confront her own cultural identity, family history, a complicated past relationship, and the undeniable compulsion to become the boys rescuer.

The MPF not only showcases the talents of many local playwrights, but also the craft of directors and actors from many different theater companies in the area. This year's edition of the MPF features four guest directors from the community who join Acorn's Producing Director Michael Levine in bringing these world premiere pieces to life: Karen Ball, Odelle Bowman, Al D'Andrea, and Liz Rollins. Acorn is currently finalizing the cast and production calendar for this year's festival, and a complete schedule will be available in early-April.

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