Karen Saari's JOYLAND to be Presented by Open-Door Playhouse

Open-Door Playhouse will present the audio play of Joyland, written by Karen Saari and directed by Bernadette Armstrong. The play will premiere on Wednesday, June 23 on the Open-Door Playhouse Podcast, www.opendoorplayhouse.org. The podcast is FREE to listen and download, but donations are greatly appreciated. Please visit www.opendoorplayhouse.org/donate to contribute. The performance will run approximately 10 minutes, with no intermission.

In Joyland, modern day interview techniques take on a new look as artificial intelligence enters the platform.

The cast will feature Joanna Ferbrache as Princess and Ayla Rose Barreau as Lorna. The Open-Door Podcast is recorded at ES Audio Studios in Glendale, CA with Sound Design by Hall Cantrell.

Karen Saari (Playwright) Karen's plays have received productions, readings and awards throughout the U.S. Full-length plays include In a Clearing (2018 world premiere, Magnetic Theatre Co in Asheville, NC; 2018 O'Neill semi-finalist; 2017 Last Frontier Theatre Conference PlayLab; 2017 ATHE Award finalist; 2015 Wisconsin Wrights New Play Festival winner), Bad in Bed: A Fairy Tale (2018 workshop production at Acadiana Rep in Lafayette, LA; Garry Marshall New Works Festival semi-finalist) and 'Rain on Fire (2020 Talk Back Theatre Playwriting Prize; 2019 Br!nk Residency Award; 2018 Austin Film Festival Second-rounder). Her play Ten Days in a Mad House (book and co-lyrics with Jennifer Hedstrom, music and co-lyrics) is a commissioned project for Music Theatre of Madison and received a 2020 National Alliance of Musical Theatre development grant. Her one-act plays including Joyland, The Ones Who Stay, and A Robot, a Clown, and a Turban have been performed across the country from Newport, WA to St. Louis to Milwaukee, WI. Karen is a member of Dramatists Guild and Playwrights Center.

Bernadette Armstrong (Director) moved to Los Angeles to work in film in the late 1990's and after her first two films went to festivals, she took a short hiatus from writing until she fell in love with small theater. Since 2008 she has had several successful theater projects produced in North Hollywood. Her play The Reading Group was named Pick of the Week by LA Weekly Magazine and in 2017 her play Simple Lives was nominated for Outstanding Writing of an Original Play or Musical by the Valley Theater Awards (the only woman nominated).

The Open-Door Playhouse is a podcast that supports new and emerging writers by producing plays in the style of the live Radio Plays popular in the 1940s & 50s. Open-Door Playhouse is hosted by playwright and producer Bernadette Armstrong who conceived of the podcast after her most recent project, Custody, which was scheduled to open in North Hollywood on September 8, 2020 at the Secret Rose Theater, was canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since September the podcast has presented over 30 new plays by emerging playwrights from all over the country.

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