Adam Rapp, Theresa Rebeck slated for Pacific Playwrights Festival

New dramas by award-winning New York playwrights Adam Rapp, Theresa Rebeck and Rajiv Joseph will be part of the 2014 Pacific Playwrights Festival, scheduled for April 25 to 27 at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.

This year’s festival will feature three fully staged productions plus four readings of new plays, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The staged productions will include Rapp’s new play, “The Purple Lights of Joppa Illinois,” about a reclusive, troubled man; the previously announced “Rest,” by Samuel Hunter, whose play “The Whale” was produced last year at South Coast Repertory; and “Five Mile Lake” by Rachel Bonds.

The productions will run longer than the festival as part of SCR’s larger season.

Rapp, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, is the writer of such plays as “Red Light Winter,” “Nocturne” and “Stone Cold Dead Serious.” He will direct “The Purple Lights of Joppa Illinois” when it is presented at South Coast Repertory.

Rebeck’s “Zealot,” which will be presented in a reading April 25, follows a tense diplomatic situation at a British consulate in the Middle East. The other readings include “Future Thinking” by Eliza Clark on April 25; Joseph’s “Mr. Wolf,” which was presented last year at SCR’s NewSCRipts series on April 26; and “Of Good Stock” by Melissa Ross, April 27.

The Pacific Playwrights Festival has provided first and early looks at plays by important dramatists including Richard Greenberg, David Lindsay-Abaire, Amy Freed and Lynn Nottage.

Ng writes for the Los Angeles Times.