Firehouse Theatre Announces 12th Annual Festival of New American Plays Semifinalists

Firehouse Theatre has announced the semifinalists of the 12th Annual Festival of New American Plays. The semifinalists are:

A Blessed Unrest
by Lynne Elson of Cranbury, NJ

Chair
by Michelle Kholos Brooks of Venice, CA

In Congress with the Night
by Sam Graber of Minneapolis, MN

LaCrosse
by Kevin Brofsky of New York, NY

Found Objects
by Marilynn Barner Anselmi of Rocky Mount, NC

Hundreds of plays were submitted to this year's Festival. The two finalists will be selected in the coming weeks and will receive a staged reading at Firehouse Theatre. Members of the audience who have seen staged readings of both finalists' work will cast their vote for their favorite play, and the winner of the Festival will be chosen by the public. The 2014 Festival of New American Plays is scheduled for August 21 and 23, 2014.

In keeping with the Firehouse Theatre's mission of promoting new work by American artists, the Festival of New American Plays began in 2002 as a way to encourage and incubate new plays by established and emerging playwrights in the USA. It has become a grassroots event with substantial involvement from the community, as hundreds of scripts submitted to the Playwriting Contest from all over the country are read by volunteer readers from the Greater-Richmond area. Each script is read twice (more if it needs a tiebreaker), and scripts with "two thumbs up" are passed on for further evaluation to an expert panel of judges, who then pick two finalists for a four-night Festival "showdown." Members of the festival audience who have seen staged readings of both finalists' work cast a vote for their favorite play, and the winner of the festival is chosen by the public. Festival winners receive cash prizes.

Kelly Younger's This World We Know won the 2013 Festival of New American Plays, and will make its world premiere February 5 - March 7, 2015 as part of Firehouse Theatre's Season 21 and Richmond's annual Acts of Faith Festival. Based in Los Angeles, Younger is an award-winning playwright with work staged off-Broadway, regionally, and internationally. John Tyler Community College Associate Professor of Theatre and Department Chair for Visual and Performing Arts Kerrigan Sullivan is set to direct.

Beginning its 21st Season, Firehouse Theatre continues to hold its place at the leading edge of contemporary American theatre in Central Virginia. Located in former Richmond Station House No. 10 in the historic Fan District, Firehouse presents important American contemporary theatre with an emphasis on plays not previously produced in the metropolitan Richmond area, including developing, producing and performing at least one new play each year.