Lucy Alibar's 'THROW ME ON THE BURNPILE...' Starts Tonight at the Douglas

A work-in-progress presentation of Lucy Alibar's "Throw Me On the Burnpile and Light Me Up" begins a limited engagement at the Center Theatre Group/Kirk Douglas Theatre tonight, May 21, as part of CTG's DouglasPlus programming. It will continue through May 31 with only 11 public performances.

Written and performed by Oscar-nominated screenwriter ("Beasts of the Southern Wild") Alibar, "Throw Me On the Burnpile and Light Me Up" blends a lecherous goat, Pentecostals on the radio, Daddy's .38 special and a house full of dogs, cats and Febreze, and countless other rich ingredients into a delicious and magical stew of stories about a singular childhood in Grady County, Florida. CTG Associate Artistic Director Neel Keller serves as director.

"Throw Me On the Burnpile and Light Me Up" has set design by Takeshi Kata, costumes by Laura Bauer, lighting by Elizabeth Harper, sound design by Adam Phalen, projection design by Jason H. Thompson and dramaturgy by Janice Paran.

Tickets are priced at $25, and can be purchased online at www.CenterTheatreGroup.org or by calling (213) 628-2772. The Kirk Douglas Theatre is located at 9820 Washington Blvd. in Culver City, 90232.

Alibar's essays and stories have been published in Zoetrope, the Oxford American and the Wall Street Journal. Her plays have been produced or developed at the National Theatre Studio in London, Joe's Pub, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, Berkeley Rep Ground Floor, Williamstown Theatre Festival, HERE Arts Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Dixon Place, New Georges, the Avignon Festival, Women Center Stage at Classic Stage Company, the Cherry Lane Theatre and the Horizon Theatre in Atlanta. Her first movie, "Beasts of the Southern Wild" (an adaptation with Benh Zeitlin of her stage play "Juicy and Delicious"), received the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes Film Festival Came?ra d'Or. For her work on "Beasts" she was nominated for a BAFTA, an Oscar and a Scripter Award, and was awarded the Ray Bradbury Nebula Award, the Humanitas Prize and the Nantucket Film Festival New Voices in Screenwriting Award. She has also adapted her play "Christmas and Jubilee Behold the Meteor Shower" for Escape Artists and "The Secret Garden" for Guillermo del Toro. She is a Sundance Screenwriting Fellow, a two-time finalist for the Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville and finalist for the O'Neill Playwrights Conference. Lucy is a member of the Obie Award-winning Youngblood EST and cofounder of the New Georges Writer/Director Lab.

DouglasPlus provides the flexibility to explore new work and push boundaries through fully and minimally staged events, workshops and readings and traditional and non-traditional performance configurations.