Fresh Loaf

KNEADY WOMAN: Courtenay Collins (front) as Cookie

If the Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition serves as the Alliance Theatre’s Research and Development Department, then its latest world premiere production, Julia Brownell’s Smart Cookie, may represent an alteration in the secret formula.

Inaugurated in 2003 and endowed by the Kendeda Foundation the following year, the program invites students of 30 graduate playwriting programs across country to submit their work. The winning play receives a full production on the Hertz Stage, finalists get high-profile staged readings, and the Alliance helps discover and cultivate some of the country’s most impressive new writers. This commitment to new work probably helped the Alliance secure its Regional Theater Tony Award in 2007.

Previous winners of the Kendeda competition have not lacked for ambition, touching on such heavyweight historical subjects as the French-Algerian War and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Plays don’t even have to win to make a splash: In 2006, Actor’s Express produced Megan Gogerty’s controversial Love Jerry, a musical with themes of pedophilia, after the play became a Kendeda finalist. To date, the reach of the plays has exceeded the grasp of several of the winners, as if the judges prefer to honor ambition and thematic breadth while excusing some clunky construction.

Smart Cookie, the fifth Kendeda winner, feels like a 180-degree turn from the others, and not just because it’s a comedy set in contemporary America. Compared to the avant-garde flourishes of last year’s In the Red and Brown Water, Smart Cookie proves almost aggressively conventional — the kind of script that could make the transition to film or television with only cosmetic re-writes. But who ever said that a sturdy narrative structure and funny one-liners were bad things? (more…)

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To coincide with this week’s world premiere of Smart Cookie by Julia Brownell, the Alliance Theatre will present stage readings of the finalists of the 2008 Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Competition on Feb. 2 and 3. This marks the fifth year in the Alliance’s competition to find and showcase promising new writers, and even the readings can be a big deal: the reading of Megan Gogerty’s Love Jerry lead to Jasson Minadakis’ decision to program the controversial musical at Actor’s Express in 2006. The readings are free and feature some of Atlanta’s best actors and directors, so they’re a great deal. Here’s the line-up:

The Near East by Alex Lewin
Directed by Rachel May (Feb. 2 at 2 p.m.)
An American archaeologist teams up with an Arab activist to unearth the “Mother of Books,” the oldest scripture, from its resting place in the desert between Mecca and Medina. But their controversial mission affects a number of other characters, including a secretly gay Arab radical, a British spy and the ghost of a precocious 13-year-old boy.

Fair Use by Sarah Gubbins
Directed by Freddie Ashley (Feb. 2 at 7:30 p.m.)
Sy and her law partner Chris have worked on some tough cases but have always worked out their competition over drinks and commiserating about dating – since his perfect woman is nothing like her perfect woman. All that changes when a client accused of plagiarism causes them to call on a hot-to-trot legal eagle. They discover that claims of intellectual property and claims of the heart are difficult to defend.

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