The City's Backyard Ep 60: The Music Theatre of CT brings you off broadway plays with New Voices by Jeff Talbott with actors Elissa DeMaria and Jeff Gurner! Off Broadway in your own backyard!

We chat with two great actors about local theatre right in your own backyard of Fairfield County!Music Theatre of Connecticut launches New Voices — a non-musical pilot program that gives a spotlight to five contemporary plays by living authors in staged readings — Oct. 11 with Jeff Talbott’s mysterious relationship drama i. The 2021-22 series also includes the comedy Hollywood, Nebraska by Kenneth Jones, Oregon by Laura Darrell, Dirty Book by Joe Landry and Kevin Renn’s Mulatto Boy.Elissa DeMaria and Jeff Gurner, in tandem with managing director and co-founder Jim Schilling, curated the program. MTC’s executive artistic director and co-founder is Kevin Connors. Using a reading agreement with Actors’ Equity Association, the series in Norwalk, CT, explores plays that have been previously produced, read or developed elsewhere, allowing actors and directors associated with MTC to use their creative muscles; to give MTC audiences added variety of programming choices; and for playwrights to look at material with fresh eyes and ears. Playwrights are invited to attend audience talkbacks in person or virtually.Jeff Gurner will direct the four-character relationship drama i, featuring Elissa DeMaria, Jacob Heimer, Cynthia Hannah and Ebbe Bassey. The play had its world premiere by Pioneer Theatre Company in Salt Lake City. Find a perusal copy of the script at New Play Exchange.Nora Chester (seated) and Elizabeth Howell in the Wyoming Theatre Festival workshop of “Hollywood, Nebraska.”Elissa DeMaria will direct Jones’ six-actor comedy Hollywood, Nebraska, about two actresses and estranged childhood friends returning the their dying hometown. It was previously seen in a workshop production by Wyoming Theatre Festival, as well as in readings by Off-Broadway’s TACT and Actors Theatre of Indiana. You can find a perusal copy of it on New Play Exchange.For tickets and more info log on to:https://www.musictheatreofct.com/newvoices