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Fresh off the hallelujah train after four glorious days with my fellow DG members in La Jolla, I was ready to jump back into the creative fray back here in Atlanta. There was so much to excite and feed me at the conference, including a transporting evening honoring Stephen Schwartz and the incredible artists who shared their work on our (my) Multidimensional Theatre panel. There was also a formal presentation of The Count, explained elsewhere in this magazine issue, but in short speak a statistical summary of how well female playwrights in America are doing in comparison to men. As Marsha Norman and Julia Jordan gave us the numerical goods, I thought about two new regional members who have each decided for various reasons to launch the next stage of her career from Atlanta. 

Rebekah Suellau is part of a new Atlanta group called the Seedling Project, which was founded by members that include two of her former Florida State classmates. Their mission is “to create a year of widely varied work, all free and all over the city, in order to generate information about what excites artists and audiences in our community. Our goal is to create an experiment, not a company, and without the pressure of long-term sustainability, we free ourselves to take big risks and major leaps from project to project. We’re producing a classical work, a company-devised original work, a contemporary work in its Atlanta premiere, two modern classics in rep, and a four-week event of serialized new plays by local playwrights.” The serialized plays are performed under the umbrella Serial Killers and involve new pieces presented by artist teams each week and with the audience favorites continuing development. Suellau said that although she has family in the southeast, she chose Atlanta primarily because it presented a “wonderful balance of opportunity and affordability.” Her credentials are in film and so now, as a “toe-in-water” theatre artist, she is “learning how to open my field of vision…I’m very interested in creating an experience of intimacy in both media.” Her “outsider” status is also consistent with the rest of the Seedling collaborators in that all of them want to expand their skills and interests. There are actor-producers, writer-directors, and so on – even a tech wizard-puppetry expert. Suellau says she brings a lot of “whys” and “why nots” to the group along with her artistic inclination to “shine a light on the shadows.” She’s always been especially interested in horror and likes the idea of bringing that from screen to stage. In regards to The Count, Suellau admits that as much as the numbers shocked her, she “feels energized rather than defeated…we’ve got a clear quantifiable measure of progress now…” 

I met that same positive determination from Sonhara Eastman when I directed her new (and first) play this past August. Eastman is a native New Yorker who is setting up her own measure of progress. She describes a “hunger for storytelling” as what lead her from five years as a model to a career writing and producing work in film and television including Tyler Perry Studios and Sony Pictures, and then on to NYU-Tisch for an MFA in Dramatic Writing. With one more year before graduation, Eastman decided to test the waters in Atlanta this summer with Pearl, a powerful play inspired by her own family history back in a Reconstruction North Carolina. Eastman’s goal was to see the piece on its feet toward further development but also to use this showcase presentation as a working model for how to draw potential producers. If those don’t appear immediately, she is prepared to continue on her own: she’s already established Sunny Lane Productions and shows an understanding for creating a community feel and branding savvy to her events. Eastman is much like (her) Pearl when she says, “I’m a strong girl. Mama raised me that way.”             

[photo caption: Rebekah Suellau headshot. Photo by Ilene Rouamvongsor]             

[photo caption: Cameron Taylor, Dan Brown and Rachel Frawley in Nerd Noir by Dani Herd, part of The Seedling Project’s Serial Killers. Photo by Jessica Fern Hunt]            

 [photo caption: Destiny Thompson, Stephanie McFarlane, Lydia Frempong, and Byron Jeans in showcase production of Pearl by DG member Sonhara Eastman and directed by DG member Pamela Turner. Photo credits Pamela Turner] 

pturner@dramatistsguild.com