PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 14, 2011

Contact: Anna Brennen, 813-251-8984

STAGEWORKS PRESENTS STAGED READING OF NEW PLAY “THE DOG STORY”

Playwright a Winner of the 2011 Breaking New Ground Playwrights Competition

WHAT: Stageworks’ staged reading of The Dog Story by Florida playwright Ed Stevens
WHERE: Shimberg Playhouse, Straz Center for the Performing Arts Center, 1010 North W. C. MacInnes Place, Tampa, FL, 33602.

WHEN: Tuesday, February 15, 2011, 7:00 PM
COST: $5.00; $3.00 students, seniors and military
CALL: 813-229-STAR or Straz Box Office

Stageworks Theatre will present the world premiere of The Dog Story, by Florida playwright Ed Stevens in a staged reading format. Ed Stevens is one of the 2011 winners of Stageworks’ prestigious Breaking New Ground Playwrights’ Competition. The Competition includes Stagewrights, the company’s longstanding bi-monthly playwriting workshop.

For 23 years SW has developed Florida playwrights and their work.  Innumerable  Florida playwrights have received awards, grants and/or productions as a result of SW assisting with the FL authors’ development of their work through dramaturgy from both the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis and the Chicago Dramatists, two of the foremost playwriting development centers in America. 

“It is only by providing encouragement and opportunities for new plays that we can ensure the survival and growth of theatre as a vital art form,” explained Stageworks Producing Artistic Director Anna Brennen. “We are proud and excited to present the work of local and developing playwrights, who represent the future of theatre.”

In the family dramedy, The Dog Story, Paul visits Mary, his last surviving aunt, in the nursing home where she lives. Paul is intent on asking Mary what she remembers of the disappearance of his childhood puppy; in recent years he has begun to doubt his deceased mother’s explanation. As Paul tries to stimulate Mary’s memory about the dog, childhood memories and long-buried family secrets come to light and Paul has to face some shocking personal truths.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT: Stagewrights’ member Ed Stevens received the Kennedy Center’s 2005 David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award for his play After, a post-9/11 story. Ed’s work has been produced in New York City, Provincetown, St. Petersburg and San Diego and has received honors at the George R. Kernodle Playwriting Contest, Attic Theatre’s One Act Marathon, Kennedy Center Ten-Minute Play Competition, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Actors Theatre New Works Festival, American Theatre Co-op, Valencia Character Company, Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival, Hidden River Arts Playwriting Award, Ashland New Plays Festival and Bay Area Playwrights Festival. His play Viewer Discretion Advised recently had a month’s run at the Kraine Theatre in New York City.

ABOUT THE CAST: The Dog Story will be performed by a cast of seven professional actors from the Tampa Bay area.