Alumni Return to E.S.T's Under 30-Playwrights Group for Short Play Festival

Youngblood, Ensemble Studio Theatre's collective of emerging playwrights under 30 (RJ Tolan/Graeme Gillis, Artistic Directors), will celebrate its fifteenth season this year with Asking For Trouble, the biggest play festival in their history. Youngblood has invited their alumni - 41 playwrights, 35 directors and 120 actors – to participate in the mammoth 5-day event, including many EST members alongside emerging talents like Johnny Pruitt ("Chappelle's Show"), Jessica Andres ("Gossip Girl"), Matt Lauria and Marguerite Stimpson (both of "Lipstick Jungle").  Writers taking part will include Lloyd Suh, Amy Fox, Ann Marie Healy, and Lucy Thurber, as well as recent Youngblood members like Amy Herzog, Qui Nguyen, Sam Forman and Zakiyyah Alexander. The series runs from October 21 through October 25 at E.S.T. (549 West 52nd Street).

"The spirit of E.S.T. and of Youngblood has always been the spirit of inclusion," said William Carden, E.S.T.'s artistic director. "It made sense for this anniversary to throw the door open as widely as possible."

Asking For Trouble is Youngblood's annual speed theater challenge: playwrights pick a cast and a director out of a hat, and are given one week to write a play for that cast. After one week of rehearsal, the plays are presented, off-book and fully staged, in a raucous, eclectic sampler platter of the group's unique voices.  Asking For Trouble plays have gone on to productions at the Royal Court in London, the E.S.T. Mainstage, and the Humana Festival (including by Heideman Award winner Michael Lew, also participating in this year's festival).

Created in 1993 by EST founder Curt Dempster to provide an artistic home and proving ground for young talent, Youngblood has grown into a major resource for early career playwrights. Over the last fifteen years, Youngblood has nurtured over 50 playwrights, including Christopher Shinn, Annie Baker, Liz Meriwether, Steven Levenson and the late John Belluso.

 "This is basically a big birthday party for us," said RJ Tolan, Youngblood's co-artistic director. "With 42 plays in five days, and almost 200 people involved, it's a chance for us to celebrate the membership and the artists we've worked with over the years while continuing to do what EST does best, which is to give new talent a chance."

Asking For Trouble is the kickoff to E.S.T.'s OCTOBERFEST, an annual fall harvest of new work where dozens of EST's 500 artistic members present new readings, workshops and performances, ranging from the legendary director Ulu Grosbard to "Daily Show" contributor Lewis Black. 

"If you write a good play, you can get in the door – that's a bedrock principle of E.S.T. That's how we all ended up here," said Graeme Gillis, a Youngblood alumni writer and the group's co-artistic director. "So in that spirit this is a kind of homecoming. Everybody climbing back onto the boat."

Tickets to Asking For Trouble are only $10.  For schedule and ticket information, go to www.youngbloodnyc.org.  For more information about Ensemble Studio Theatre, go to www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org.

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