Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Selections made

I met with the Selection Panel for the NJ Young Playwrights Festival this past Friday, March 11 and we chose the Festival plays in the High School, Junior HS, and Elementary divisions. I will reach out to the playwrights and their families and schools all this week. Rewrites and Podstages decisions will be made by the end of March.

First, I want to congratulate everyone who wrote a play and submitted it to the NJ Young Playwrights Festival this year. Writing a play is a fun, but difficult process. Engaging in that work and sharing the results is an accomplishment of which to be proud. The readers at all levels of this Festival were impressed with the work and enjoyed reading what you created. However, only a few plays can be chosen for the Festival and we believe that the selections for this year stand as strong representatives of the work being done by the youth of New Jersey.

Overall, the Panel enjoyed reading and discussing these scripts and making the selections was a difficult task. The plays that reached the final round in each of these divisions were unique in their themes and storytelling techniques and held a variety of strengths.

Congratulations again to all who submitted work to the Festival. We will be in touch with the division winners this week. All other playwrights will receive their written critiques via email toward the end of May, or in early June. In the meantime please direct any questions to the Festival email address at njypf@ptnj.org.

Thanks and happy writing!