A marathon of new readings and post-show discussions, the 4th Annual Breaking Ground Festival gives playwrights an opportunity to hear their works read aloud in front of an audience with the goal of ushering the shows towards full production readiness. Melinda Lopez's Sonia Flew, Stephen Belber's Carol Mulroney, Mat Smart's The Hopper Collection, and Theresa Rebeck's Mauritius have all traveled from a Breaking
Ground reading to a full production at the Huntington and beyond. This year's festival offers a brand new batch of plays-in-development by writers from Boston and around the country. Get in on the ground floor with new plays that will appear on stages near and far in the not-too-distant future. This year's festival includes:

Alexandros
By Melinda Lopez, Huntington Playwriting Fellow

Maritza and her daughter Marty have returned to Miami -- for the first time in ten years -- to celebrate Abuela's birthday. But something isn't right; Abuela thinks the party is for her own funeral, Maritza's brother Tio seems awfully
close to the gardener, and Alexandros the dog has gone missing. Set against the backdrop of Nixon's resignation, Lopez's newest play is a zany roller coaster ride through the chaos of family obligations, language barriers, and love. Alexandros is the product of a commission from the Laguna Playhouse.

The Sweet Call of Grief
By Sinan Ünel, Huntington Playwriting Fellow

It's 2004 and matters of life and death are unfolding at a harrowing pace. Two journalists find themselves unexpectedly detained by a band of insurgents as bombs rain down on an Iraqi landscape. Meanwhile, in Turkey, on the eve of a festival celebrating the great Sufi poet Rumi,
an unexpected allegiance is forged in the struggle to secure the journalists' release. History, religion, and the beauty of whirling dervishes collide in this heart-breakingly immediate portrait of a world at war.

Parallelogram
By Kate Snodgrass, Huntington Playwriting Fellow
& Artistic Director of Boston Playwrights' Theatre.

In the realm of quantum physics, the act of observation decides the fate of the observed, and two universes -- containing separate outcomes of the same events -- can exist side by side. Eleanor and Michael, scientists working in very different worlds, find themselves nonetheless connected by a common thread. Can the movement of the stars and planets illuminate the darkness between them?