Youth Theater Project "The Tale" To Be Presented One Free Performance On Sunday, July 16, 2006 at 7:00 p.m.

July 12, 2006

Waterford, CT ~ The National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center will present a special performance of Tommy Smith's THE TALE, a Youth Theater Project, on Sunday, July 16 at 7:00 p.m. in the Edith Oliver Theater. The performance is free and open to the public.

THE TALE is a hilarious, fast-paced play with music depicting the tales of Greek Mythology in a zany and witty look at the lives of the gods on Mount Olympus, specially written for grades 5-9, and fun for the entire family.

The O'Neill's Youth Theater Project develops new works written for young audiences. Plays are chosen for development as part of the National Playwrights Conference, and are presented as staged readings for the public. THE TALE was selected through the O'Neill's Open Submission process (for which more than 750 scripts were submitted) as was his project for this year's National Playwrights Conference, AIR CONDITIONING.

Mr. Smith is a recent graduate of The Juilliard School's Playwrighting Program and a two-time winner of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize for Emerging Writers (2005, 2006). His stage adaptation and performance of Joe Wenderoth's satire Letters to Wendy's won the 2002 Artistic Pick at the Seattle Fringe Festival, and his short plays Lysa and Streak were finalists for the Heideman Award at the ATL National Ten Minute Play Contest (2001 and 2002 respectively.) Tommy's work has been seen at Playwright's Horizon's, The Ontological Theater (New York), The Huntington Theater (Boston), The Sacramento Theater Company, and ACT Theater (Seattle), among others.

Director for THE TALE is Sarah Rasmussen, a directing fellow for the National Playwrights Conference from the University of California in San Diego. The acting company will include ten student interns and participants in the O'Neill's National Theater Institute's new Theatermakers Program, an accredited summer learning intensive. The actors will depict more than 50 characters in THE TALE.

THE TALE is open to the public and tickets are FREE. Reservations are recommended; please call the O'Neill Box Office at 860-443-1238.In the event of rain, the performance will be moved into the Dina Merrill Theater.

Don't miss this unique, intimate, and entertaining theatrical event!

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, founded in 1964, has been home to more than 1,000 new works for the stage and 2,500 emerging artists and is itself the winner of a special Tony Award, the National Opera Award, the Jujamcyn Award for Theater Excellence and the Arts and Business Council Encore Award. Today, the O'Neill is home to the National Playwrights Conference, National Music Theater Conference, Puppetry Conference, Cabaret Conference, National Critics Institute, and the fully accredited National Theater Institute, which includes semester-long, fully accredited intensive theater-training programs and a six-week accredited summer program, Theatermakers. In addition, the O'Neill owns and operates the Monte Cristo Cottage, a National Historic Landmark and the childhood home of Nobel Prize-winning and four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Eugene O'Neill. For more information regarding the Center, please visit the O'Neill website at www.TheONeill.org or call 860-443-5378.