Centre Stage's 2009 New Play Festival Runs 9/14-19

Centre Stage will present its 7th annual New Play Festival September 14-19 featuring the works of four finalists selected from submissions of over 100 works. These plays will be presented in staged readings that are free and open to the public. Each performance will be followed by an in-depth discussion of the work, led by Festival Chairman, Dr. Brian Haimbach and playwright-in-residence, Jeffrey Sweet. On the fifth evening of the Festival, Centre Stage will present the latest work in development by Mr. Sweet. A discussion with Mr. Sweet will be held the following morning.
Performances will begin at 7 p.m. each evening, Monday-Friday. Discussion with Jeffrey Sweet will take place on Saturday morning, September 19. All events are free and open to the public.

Jeffrey Sweet has been a playwright, screenwriter, lyricist, critic, journalist, teacher, theatre historian and sometime songwriter and director. He has been associated as a playwright-in-residence with the Tony Award-winning Victory Gardens Theatre of Chicago since 1979. His plays include Routed, which had its premiere at Ensemble Studio Theatre; Flyovers, which won a Jefferson Award for playwriting; The Action Against Sol Schumann, winner of the American Theatre Critics Association Award for Playwriting; and many others.
Mr. Sweet is the author of three books: Something Wonderful Right Away, an oral history of the Second City comedy troupe, and two widely-used texts on playwriting, The Dramatist's Toolkit and Solving Your Script. In collaboration with the late Otis L. Guernsey, he co-edited eleven editions of the Best Plays Annual. He has written for a variety of publications including Newsday, American Theatre, Variety, Backstage, The L.A. Times, The Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, The Writer, The Dramatist and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. His writing for television garnered a Writers Guild of America Award and an Emmy nomination.
He has taught for a variety of universities and professional programs including the Actors Studio Theatre School, Second City, New Dramatists, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Rutgers, University of Richmond, the University of the Arts, and Columbia University. He has appeared as a guest on BBC radio and American public radio stations.
Mr. Sweet earned his BFA in film from NYU (where his teachers included Martin Scorcese, Paul Simon and Clive Barnes) and studied with Lehman Engel for six years at the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop. He is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, an alumnus of New Dramatists, and a member of the Council of the Dramatists Guild.
For more information, please contact Centre Stage at 864-233-6733.

http://www.centrestage.org/newplayfestival.html