August marked my third year as Managing Artistic Director of Working Title Playwrights and while it’s been a lot of hard work, it’s been a lot of fun, too, especially when I get to introduce a remarkable new play by a dynamic playwright.

WTP’s Ethel Woolson Lab presents John Drago’s THE BIRDWATCHERS at Academy Theatre, Sept. 26, 2009, 2 p.m.

A parable about the inevitable confrontation between the beauty and the horror of life, THE BIRDWATCHERS tells the story of a mother’s struggle to accept the death of her beloved though estranged son, driven from the family home in small-town Georgia some time ago by an unyielding daughter desperate for her own salvation from addiction.

When a stranger from Atlanta arrives bearing the shattering news of the boy’s death, and describing a classical form of divination wherein the behavior of the birds is used to understand the will of the gods, a chain of events is set in motion which forces the family to face the evil, awful things both in the world and at home. A doppelganger of the lost boy, an unexpected gift from the past, and a sudden accumulation of birds in the front yard lead mother and daughter to a devastating explosion of irrevocable lies and the ultimate destruction of the boy’s sainted memory.
This workshop reading is directed by Melissa Foulger, dramaturgy by Addae Moon and performed by Daniel Burnley, Clifton Guterman, Megan Hayes and Jo Howarth. A talkback moderated by Betty Hart will immediately follow the reading.

TICKETS: $10 at door. Reservations requested. Call 404.441.2716.

The Ethel Woolson Lab replaces WTP’s former Summer Reading Series and Playwrights Salon, making it WTP’s only competitively selected play development series. The workshop is week-long with actors, director and dramaturg culminating in the staged reading for the public. John Drago’s THE BIRDWATCHERS is the second of three Ethel Woolson Labs to be presented in 2009. The first was Sherry Paulsen’s LADIES IN WAITING presented in August 2009.