"Front Room" Receives Semi-Finalist Position at Ashland New Plays Festival

Richard is elated to pass on the news that his play, Front Room, will be moving forward as a semi-finalist in the Ashland New Plays Festival. Front Room is only one of 6% of the submitted scripts that is being considered by the festival’s full Reading Committee. If Richard continues to move forward into the finals, he would be one of four total winners that would receive two readings during the week of the festival. More information will be made available in July – please keep your fingers crossed!

Front Room is about a middle-aged theatre professor and director, Sandra. Sandra has developed a reputation as a remarkably skilled and insightful theatre practitioner. When a veteran of the Iraq war auditions for her upcoming production of The Glass Menagerie Sandra's banal and predictable personal life is given a nudge toward new meaning and vitality. Sandra's elderly, widowed mother, Abby, is a desperate hoarder, as well as a force of nature. When a new and complicated romantic relationship begins for Sandra, Abby's obsessions throw mother and daughter into a passionate battle for control, self- determination and a glimmer of happiness.

Ashland New Plays Festival (ANFP) was founded in 1992 and managed by a volunteer board of directors, and encourages playwrights in the creation of new works through public readings. They also offer an educational forum to the community through discussions and workshops. Ashland is also the home of the esteemed and highly-lauded Oregon Shakespeare Festival, an ongoing celebration and performances of popular Shakespeare plays.