Songs of Hestia: Five Plays from the 2010 San Francisco Olympians Festival

Publisher Marketing: In "Songs of Hestia - Five Plays From the 2010 San Francisco Olympians Festival," five playwrights adapt some of Western culture's oldest stories to illuminate our present-day concerns with imagination, creativity, curiosity and passion. These are plays that ask the hard questions, that explore our humanity through exploring the myths that make us who we are. Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, is variously an ex-nun who runs a Hollywood hot dog cart (Aphrodite: A Romance in Infomercials, by Nirmala Nataraj); a barista who serves as the play's moral conscience (Hermes by Bennett Fisher); a sharp-tongued spinster (Juno en Victoria by Stuart Eugene Bousel); a crazed, childlike wraith (Demeter's Daughter by Claire Rice); and a nurturing but ultimately ineffectual goddess (Hephaestus and the Three Golden Robots by Evelyn Jean Pine). With an introduction by Marissa Skudlarek. The San Francisco Olympians Festival is an annual festival produced by No Nude Men Productions. Each year the festival brings together over 100 Bay Area writers, fine artists, directors and actors to create plays inspired by Greek mythology to show how these Gods and myths remain relevant today. This volume brings together five of the plays from the first Olympians Festival in 2010 by Nirmala Nataraj, Bennett Fisher, Stuart Eugene Bousel, Claire Rice, and Evelyn Jean Pine with an introduction by Marissa Skudlarek. Contributor Bio:  Bousel, Stuart Eugene Stuart Eugene Bousel, a graduate of Reed College, is the artistic director of No Nude Men Productions and the executive director of the San Francisco Olympians Festival. He has directed a number of classic plays, including Lysistrata, Oresteia, Faust Part One, Salome, Edward II, Le Cid, Love's Labors Lost, Hamlet, Phaedra, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, M. Butterfly and The Frogs. He has also directed the world premieres of David Duman's Fishing, Alison Luterman's Oasis, Nirmala Nataraj's The Monk and The Book of Genesis Remixed and Remastered, Morgan Ludlow's Ruth and the Sea, and Claire Rice's Woman Come Down. Additionally, he writes plays, including The Exiled, Speak To Me, Love Egos Alternative Rock, Troijka, Housebroken, Speak Roughly, Edenites, Juno en Victoria and Polyxena in Orbit. His play Vincent of Gilgamesh was nominated for the MAC Award in 2001; Wild Blue Peaks was nominated for the Heideman Award in 2003; Mathew 33:6 was a finalist for the Sky Cooper Award in 2007. His work has been performed in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Melbourne, Dublin, Tucson and Portland. Most recently, he edited the drama collection SONGS OF HESTIA (EXIT Press, 2012).