QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT by Gabriel Jason Dean
Directed by Rudy Ramirez
The Vortex, 2307 Manor Rd.
May 25 – June 15, Thursday -Sunday 8pm

Theo Turner is a young cosmologist on the verge. But Theo’s “big bang” isn’t theoretical. His universe explodes when he and his wife travel to the Appalachian South to visit his parents about an impending adoption only to discover that Theo’s aging parents are meth addicts. Science crashes violently into nature, identities shift, memories speak, and the future can only be won by renegotiating the past. The cosmos is no more wondrous than a troubled human family improvising its path into the future.

A previous version of QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT was the winner of the 2010 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award and was produced by the Essential Theatre, Peter Hardy, Artistic Director, as part of the 2010 Power Plays Festival in Atlanta, Georgia.  A new draft was subsequently workshopped and produced at Cultural Development Corporation’s 2012 Source Festival in Washington, DC.

QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT is the sixth play in a 7-play collection called The Attapulgus Elegies.  Through the lives of the residents, over the course of the last two decades, the collection chronicles the death of a small, rural town in the foothills of the Appalachians Mountains.

Gabriel Jason Dean is a New York/Austin- based playwright who originally hails from Atlanta, GA. His plays have been produced or developed at Theatre Row, Hangar Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, the Lark, New York Stage & Film, People’s Light, ASSITEJ International, The Kennedy Center,  Oregon Shakespeare, Dallas Children’s Theatre, A Red Orchid Theatre, Aurora Theatre, Dad’s Garage Theatre, Actor’s Express, Horizon Theatre, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, FronteraFest, Source Festival and Essential Theatre.  Gabriel received the Kennedy Center’s ACTF 2012 Paula Vogel Prize, Theatre for Young Audience’s Award and was Runner-Up for the National Steinberg Award.  In 2011, he received the Kennedy Center’s ACTF Ken Ludwig Prize for a body of work from an emerging writer and was Runner-Up for the Princess Grace Award.  His script for children, The Transition of Doodle Pequeño received the 2011 New England Theatre Conference Aurand Harris Award and was selected for the 2012 Kennedy Center New Visions / New Voices Conference with People’s Light and Theatre Company.  He is the recipient of the 2010 Essential Theatre New Play Prize and won the 2010 Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival.  Gabriel was voted “Best Playwright” in 2009 by Creative Loafing: Atlanta. In 2005, he won the City of Atlanta Bureau of Cultural Affairs Playwriting Award. Other plays have been finalists or semi-finalists for the Seven Devils Conference, The O’Neill Theatre Conference, PlayPenn, JAW, Bay Area Playwright’s Festival, the Lark Playwright’s Week and Aurora Theatre’s Global Age Project.  His scripts are available through Dramatic Publishing, Playscripts and Samuel French.  Gabriel’s poetry, fiction and journalism has been published in Snake Nation Review, The Tower, Eclectica Magazine, The Melic Review, and Creative Loafing. He received the Porter Fleming Prize for Fiction and the Sidney Lanier Prize for Poetry. He teaches Playwriting at the brief-residency MFA Creative Writing Program at Spalding University. BA: Oglethorpe University. MFA: Michener Center for Writers—UT Austin.

QUALITIES OF STARLIGHT  is presented with the assistance of the ScriptWorks Finer Point Fund for New Play Production and the May 31st performance will be a benefit for ScriptWorks to replenish the fund.  Come out and support your fellow member and ScriptWorks at the same time!

Tickets and complete details available at www.vortexrep.org