ABOUT THE PURE LAB PURE Lab is a division of PURE Theatre that develops new voices in American theatre. During the season, PURE Pass holders receive exclusive invitations to various PURE Lab table readings, staged readings, and special events. The PURE Lab creates, recruits, and develops plays that explore PURE Theatre territory: contemporary, challenging, character-based drama. The PURE Lab exposes new audiences and potential producers to work created by members, and it seeks collaborative projects with other theatres. PURE Theatre’s long-term goal is to produce entirely new work, and the PURE Lab is the primary incubator for that work. SUBMISSION POLICY PURE Theatre produces riveting stories rendered theatrically. We are keenly interested in that rare work—naturalistic, abstract, fanciful—that explodes on stage in an unforgettable experience for our audience. Finally, we’re looking for—but are not limited to—emerging playwrights living in the Southeast. PURE Theatre does not accept unsolicited manuscripts. Playwrights interested in having their work considered should send a brief email of inquiry to PURE’s literary manager, Spencer Deering, at spencer@puretheatre.org. Please include the following information: Title Brief synopsis Number of characters Prior production history, and a list outstanding rights or encumbrances. Brief bio of the playwright

PAST PURE LAB EVENTS

PURE Holidays II (2007)

What happens when PURE takes on the holidays? The audience wins—with laughs. PURE follows up last year’s sellout run of PURE Holidays with PURE Holidays II (Yes, we’re that original). Three hilarious one act plays by our LAB playwrights. PURE’S last run in the Cigar Factory.

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Brother Bill
written & directed by LAB member Jimmy Ward
with Jimmy Ward, Kelly Jewell, Regan Blum, and Brian Smith

A Charleston financial speculator and adviser entertains his last prospective client before some pesky federal agents show up at his office with too many annoying questions about his business practices. The nerve, especially during Christmas!

Walking Backwards for the Last Time
written & directed by LAB member Spencer Deering
with Brian DeCosta

A recently dumped, mercurial college tour guide is hung over, pissed, and standing before a group from an all-girls’ school in Aiken. They’ve been sentenced to his final whirlwind tour of the C of C campus. Uh-Oh.

A Waffle House Christmas
written & directed by LAB member Rodney Lee Rogers
with Josh Wilhoit, Sharon Graci, and Sullivan Graci Hamilton

A self-professed queen of the scattered, smothered, and covered keeps her shiftless middle-aged boy and reality-challenged granddaughter in line on Christmas eve. In a Rashomon-like irreverent take on A Christmas Carol, one bad night before the arrival of Jolly Saint Nick cooks up laughter and redemption from the Jerry Springer set.

PURE Holidays I (2006)

CHARLESTON CITY PAPER CITY PICK: “Get a Gaggle of Giggles”

On the other end of the spectrum from the Charleston Christmas Show lies PURE Theatre's holiday show, which features three short, quirky comedies written by local PURE Lab playwrights and starring local actors and invites the audience to B.Y.O.B. (or E., or W., or whatever floats your holiday boat). Organizer Spencer Deering offers up A Snowball's Chance, featuring a war between a New Yorker trying to re-create a Yankee wonderland at his second home in Charleston and his irate blue-blood neighbor; C. Kathleen Donnelly presents Misplaced Mistletoe, where a daughter's plan to find a boyfriend for her mother rains chaos on a law firm's office holiday party; and James C. Ward put together A Hunley Christmas, which imagines two Confererate sailors as they stand guard on Sullivan's Island in Christmas 1863. Expect raunch and riotous laughter, and no need for an extra-long attention span: the three plays all transpire in just 90 minutes.

Readings from the PURE Lab

February 15 and 16, 2007
New scenes and even newer revisions by Bea Aronson, Spencer Deering,
C. Kathleen Donnelly, Mike Litchfield, and Patrick Sharbaugh

COYOTE PICNIC by Patrick Sharbaugh

developed in the PURE Lab

May 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 2007

Directed by Sharon Graci
Dramaturg: David Mandel

Developed in conjunction with the PURE Lab, Coyote Picnic is a dark comedy about the remarkable things family members will do for, and to, each other, under the wrong circumstances. It’s the story of a young girl in Phoenix, her estranged brother, their dead father, and a Mormon Hospice worker. Playwright Patrick Sharbaugh’s tale also turns on a broken down 1961 Bentley with a trunk full of cockroaches, a Baptist boarding school in Devil's Elbow, Missouri, love, marriage, rampant infidelity, crystal meth, The Catcher in the Rye, Texas Hold’em, baby tattoos, Burmese Star Tortoises, rohypnol, butterfly swarms, and 12 dead Mexican immigrants. And hungry coyotes, of course.