Studio Series features new and upcoming playwrights

SANDWICH — Advice To The Players, Sandwich’s Shakespeare Company, is opening its 2019 Studio Series with John Minigan’s "Breaking the Shakespeare Code" on Saturday, July 6, at 7:30 p.m. at The Arts Center, 12 Main St., Sandwich.

A tale of growth and odd pairings, "Breaking the Shakespeare Code" is the story of two people who meet three times over their lives to discuss what it takes to act Shakespeare, to compete in the theatrical world, and the oddities of being human and learning from each other.

Playwright John Minigan will attend the reading and answer questions afterward.

Minigan is a 2019-2020 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellow in Dramatic Writing. His plays have been developed with the Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Portland Stage Company, New Repertory Theater, the New American Playwrights Project, and the Great Plains Theatre Conference. "Queen of Sad Mischance" is a 2019 winner of the Clauder Competition and a 2018 O’Neill Finalist. His work has been included in the Best American Short Plays, Best Ten-Minute Short Plays, and New England New Plays anthologies. He is a past winner of the Nantucket Short Play Contest, the Rover Dramawerks Competition, the Longwood 0-60 Contest, Seoul Players Contest, and the KNOCK International Short Play Competition. He is a Dramatists Guild Ambassador for Eastern New England.

The Studio Series will continue on Saturdays at 7:30 p.m this summer:

July 6: "Breaking The Shakespeare Code," by John Minigan.

July 27: "Bearings," by John Gardiner.

Aug. 17: "Thy Will," by Timothy Mooney.

Aug. 24: "A Midsummer Night’s Nightmare," by Luke Haskell.

Aug. 31: "Noir Hamlet."

The 2019 Studio Series consists of readings, directed and read by ATTP’s company and offered to the community by donation. Most of the readings in the 2019 series are "Shakespeare adjacent" to help celebrate the group's 20th anniversary of producing the Bard’s work in New Hampshire. The readings are an opportunity to hear in-progress work, which means the audience is invited stay after the reading for a Q&A session to share their responses directly with the playwright in most circumstances.

For more information, see www.advicetotheplayers.org/the-studio-series.