CEDAR CITY, Utah — The Utah Shakespearean Festival recently announced the three playwrights who will participate in the 2008 New American Playwrights Project. This year the project will feature works by Matthew Ivan Bennett from Salt Lake City, Utah, T.J. Edwards from Brooklyn, New York, and David Rush from Chicago, Illinois.

Staged readings of the plays will be performed in the auditorium theatre August 7 to 8, 14 to15, 21 to 22 and 27 to 29 at 10 a.m. Tickets are $8 per play or $21 for the entire series. Tickets are on sale now at 1-888-PLAYTIX and www.bard.org.

“We had more than 100 solid entries this year, and from those we have chosen three new amazing works,” said Charles Metten, director of the New American Playwrights Project. “We have two poetic dramas about classic figures and one comedy about the struggles facing American Catholic families today.”

The three playwrights will workshop their new scripts with a dramaturg and a team of actors and directors to polish their plays and present them in staged readings for the public. Matthew Ivan Bennett’s play Di Esperienza will workshop August 7-8, T.J. Edward’s play Father Mike will workshop August 14-15, and David Rush’s play Germinous Seeds will workshop August 21-22. The playwrights will receive feedback from the audience during talkbacks following each performance. The playwrights will then have time to further refine the plays before they present them again August 27-29.

Intended to encourage the development of new plays, the New American Playwrights Project focuses on western playwrights, giving attention to western subjects, characters, experiences and themes. New plays featuring classical themes and subjects are occasionally chosen.

Di Esperienza delves headlong into the mortal Leonardo, and examines the edges where myth and reality meet. The name Leonardo da Vinci conjures an archetypal image: a sage, old man with a beard and beret. He seems almost godlike. Yet, like most of us, he was plagued with self-doubt. He procrastinated. He wondered who he was.

Father Mike is a gentle, nostalgic comedy that takes place in 1955. In the play, a Catholic family struggles with questions of faith, change and love in an innocent American era.

Germinous Seeds uses Herman Melville’s life and work as a point of departure for three interrelated stories. Together they weave an intriguing exploration of the mystery of human identities and the inability to connect. As a tour de force, two actors perform three roles each.

The New American Playwrights Project is currently accepting submissions for the 2009 season. For more information visit http://bard.org/plays/napp2008.html.

The Festival’s 47th season runs June 23 through October 25 and features The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, The School for Wives, Cyrano de Bergerac, Fiddler on the Roof, Julius Caesar, Moonlight and Magnolias, and Gaslight. Tickets are available by calling 800-PLAYTIX or by going online to www.bard.org.