WHEN: Today, Tuesday, January 12, 7:30pm – 10:00pm
WHERE: Academy Theatre, 119 Center St., Avondale Estates, GA

All is not well in the Leighton household. Earl is about to realize his lifelong ambition of building a skyscraper when his mind begins to rebel against him. His wife, Liz, is realizing that the life she has come to love is beginning to spiral apart, and she’s not taking it well… or lying down. Their children are another story. Caleb has secret, and a new Ferrari, and a tailor. Rebecca, the journalist, is returning home after being fired. Grey has resigned from life in the wake of a scandal that nearly destroyed his own career. Promises are broken, loyalties are tested, and a lingering intimacy demands to be dealt with. This is a play about the messy architecture of a life, the price of ambition, and ultimately, the sacrifices it takes to build a legacy.

WITH Tony Vaughn, Jen Harper, Betty Hart, Enoch King and Eugene H. Russell IV.

A talkback with the playwright will immediately follow the reading.

FREE to WTP members. $5 donation at door all others.

Working Title Playwrights is proud to partner with Alliance Theatre Education and others to present Atlanta with this special upcoming event you can see here, or fly to Denmark!

Roberta Carreri is a master performer and teacher who has, for 33 years, been a member of the Danish theatre company Odin Teatret, directed by Eugenio Barba. Born in 1953 in Milan, Italy, Roberta has performed around the world in such Odin performances as Brecht’s Ashes, Kaosmos, Mythos, Andersen’s Dream, Judith, and Salt. Ms. Carreri gives workshops for actors all over the world that focus on the actor’s physical presence and the sonority of the voice. She has trained in physical theater practices from Japan, China, Bali and India.

TRACES IN THE SNOW is work demonstration that explores through physical presentation and narrative. Ms. Carreri’s professional autobiography, since 1978. The performance includes fragments of the performance “Judith” and explanations of Ms. Carreri’s approach to physical and vocal training. Read the rest of this entry »

Monetary contributions keep coming in, from both auction sales from the Fun and Fund Raising for Allen event as well as online gifts. We have currently raised around $14,000 for Allen’s cost of living. With Medicaid and Social Security kicking in, because of your overwhelming generosity, Allen and Olivia are confident they have enough financial assistance to help him through this cancer ordeal at this time.

For those of you who still want to contribute somehow, we ask that you please consider:

1. Sharing your good will with the Atlanta Community Food Bank (or whomever else you might feel inclined to help) with contributions of canned foods or money. As Olivia told me, “God knows that (a) folks have already been UNBELIEVABLY generous with us already and (b) that there are still tons of needy folks out there every day who also need tending to.”

2. Writing to Grady Hospital’s new CEO, Mr. Michael Young, and let him know how you appreciate the quality of care being given to (Patrick) Allen Hagler and encourage him to stay the course on reforming the state’s primary health care system. What you may not know, is that while we have (relatively few) complaints about the quality of care Allen is receiving – genuinely, the staff across the board has been positive, helpful and good at what they do – the fact is the system itself is so flawed that one mistake made by one person will cause a 2-hour appointment to last twelve hours or longer; that nurses are so understaffed some clinics wait for every patient to check in before they start triaging; and that some bathrooms and clinics (particularly in first floor clinics) are so filthy one questions whether a sick person will only get sicker the longer they stay in Grady … and considering how long they have to wait now, it does not seem conducive to healing. Read the rest of this entry »

Allen Hagler and Jo Howarth as G.W. and Latrelle, SORDID LIVES

And it just doesn’t stop! Yes, Sir, we’ll have some more…

Del Shores – internationally known playwright (“Sordid Lives,” “Southern Baptist Sissies”), actor, & director of film & TV – has offered to auction a DVD of “Sordid Lives: The Series” signed by himself and the entire cast (including Leslie “Brother Boy” Jordan) in support of Allen and our efforts to love on him. He’s doing this on his Sordid Lives Facebook site – which has over 15,000 fans!

Please note that Del Lives in LA and has never met Allen. In fact, when he made the offer he didn’t even realize that Allen played “GW” in Process Theatre’s production of “Sordid Lives” last year. He reached out simply because Allen is an actor in need. To quote Topher Payne, “You gotta love sweet Southern boys.”

To get more details and bid, go to the designated Sordid Lives Facebook page now. Thanks, Del!

Last night’s fund raising event for Allen Hagler was a smashing success!  While we’re still counting and have several outstanding bids from the silent auction to be settled, we’re expecting a tally of around $8,000 – 100% of which will go to Allen himself. PRETTY DARNED GREAT for an event thrown together on the sheer will of love. As one friend has said, “It felt way more like a birthday party!”

If you weren’t able to make it, then you missed the opportunity to enjoy a wealth of food, drink and generosity, as friends and family of Allen Hagler gathered together to hear new plays by Curt Shannon and David Fisher in concert readings directed by Betty Hart. In addition, the dynamic duo of Johnny Drago and Emma Crandall wowed the crowd with back-handed compliments that some of us are still wincing from today (but in a happy, codependent way). Read the rest of this entry »

The Atlanta theater community and the community-at- large have really come through with donations to Fun and Fundraising for Allen. We hope you’ll join us and help make the evening even more successful!

Starting at—like, right now—6pm tonight at The Academy, you can graze on tasty treats, purchase something to drink and/or a fabulous compliment from playwright Johnny Drago, buy a chance to win a great raffle item, make a bid on a gift for you or someone you love and hear two new short plays from WTP playwrights Curt Shannon and Dave Fisher. Admission is $10 for those who can afford (every cent goes to Allen) or—for those who can’t—two cans for the Atlanta Food Bank.

Here’s a mere glimpse of the array of goods and services you can win in tonight’s silent auction and raffle: Read the rest of this entry »

At this time, Working Title Playwrights, along with Academy Theatre, is hosting a fund raising event in conjunction with an On Demand reading of two new, short plays by WTP members Curt Shannon and David Fisher.

Tickets are a mere $10 at the door, and we’ll have food donated by area restaurants and beer, wine and sodas for a cheap $2 each.

A silent auction will begin at 6pm, and the readings will begin at 7:30 p.m.  ALL proceeds – 100% of the door, bar and silent auction – will go toward helping our dear friend Allen Hagler with his cost of living during this most arduous time in his life.

WHERE:  Academy Theatre, 119 Center St., Avondale Estates, GA

WHEN:  Tuesday, November 17, 2009

DOORS OPEN: 6 p.m. for silent auction. New play readings begin 7:30 p.m. Silent auction will wrap up immediately following the talkback at the end of the second play.

COST:  $10 at the door, but if you don’t have the $10 DON’T LET THAT STOP YOU – PLEASE COME ANYWAY!

And if you’ve been moved by Allen’s story and want to help, you can make a contribution to his care. Click the pledgie.com ‘DONATE’ button below, or at the top right of column of this blog. Read the rest of this entry »

The good news: two of those prescriptions that Allen got filled were for two different kinds of morphine, so at least his pain was contained for the first time since his ordeal began.

The bad news: when we went to Grady Radiation the next day, the oncologists there were really terrific, but refused to begin his treatments when they learned his Grady Card hadn’t yet been renegotiated.  On the one hand, it is benevolent that the physicians tried to help him not go into insurmountable debt.  But I ask how benevolent is the system that requires such a choice of both doctor and patient? Read the rest of this entry »

At this time, Allen is physically unable to work, but because of his existing Grady Card co-pay assignment, we were made to go to the Unemployment Office where he (with the energy of a man deprived of an adequate oxygen supply) jumped through the hoops to prove he is, in fact, unemployed. This, by the way, is a point of emotional turmoil for his employers who truly, truly love Allen and would have kept him “on the books” forever, whether he could do the labor or not, just so he’d have some income during his recovery.

But the costs of oncology treatments and their related prescriptions are excessive – even through the community hospital, which would not cut him a break so long as he had a job. Read the rest of this entry »

As Allen continued to wait to hear back from the Veterans Administration, Dr. Janet managed an appointment for him at Grady and he did get a Grady Card just about a month before his cancer diagnosis. He was then diagnosed with Gerd – not the daughter of a Scandinavian giant, but acid reflux disease, which has ginormous heartburn and indigestion, and can lead to damage to the esophageal lining, and happens to be one of two leading causes of esophageal cancer—particularly in American men.

The doctor didn’t tell him that last part. Instead, he prescribed Nexium and Allen discovered he made approximately $500 too much per year for Grady to deem him truly poor when he was assigned his co-pay at $50 and 50% of all services and 100% of all prescriptions. He wasn’t made aware of this until he actually went to pay for his prescription of Nexium and it was a whopping $178. Read the rest of this entry »