Photos from Day 1 - Rehearsals

Yesterday we spent the day reading through all ten plays for the Festival with many of the playwrights present. It was an active day that didn't leave time for many pictures, but here are a few to give a small glimpse into the work that is being done this week:

Back in the Saddle

My desk yesterday as I made final preparations for NJYPF

Preparations are just about done and this Sunday we begin rehearsals for the 32nd annual New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival. This is a program I have run for Playwrights Theatre since I started working there in 2002. For the past two months, I've communicated with the high school playwrights via email and phone, and finally had a chance to meet them in person at the NJ Governor's Awards for Arts Education on Wednesday. These four students have done a remarkable job not just crafting engaging stories, but also a pair of significant revisions using feedback from our contest readers and the festival dramaturgs. The first rewrite was a great way to assess the commitment to the process and willingness of the finalists to make changes to their work. The goal of the second rewrite under the guidance of a dramaturg, is to help jump start the playwrights into the rehearsal process.

The high school playwrights have always been directly involved in rehearsals, but this is only the second year implementing a pre-Festival routine (last year introduced the dramaturgs; this year, the finalist rewrites). A year prior, I noticed that only a handful of playwrights were actively participating in the program. There are a variety of reasons for this, of course, but it seemed that much of it had to do with the playwrights being thrown into rehearsals without any significant orientation. Seeing professionals work on your script can be exciting, but it can also be very intimidating. Hopefully we've alleviated some of that this year. I can't wait to begin working on the scripts tomorrow. What I can wait for is my new role in this year's program.

I've been directing portions of the Festival for many years, but this is the first time that I will perform in them. Festival scripts are often populated by youth, or young adult, characters; however, this year we were surprised that of the 13 total characters in the four high school plays, only five characters were young people. The majority of the actors that I typically hire for young playwrights presentations are in their early to mid-20s, so the challenge became finding the actors needed for the adult characters. We did well, but fell short to the point where a colleague and I will need to step into two roles. That's all well for my colleague who is a professional actor. For me, on the other hand, it is not a typical role. I've performed onstage before, but I haven't since the New Plays for Young Audiences Series in 2007. So, this should be interesting, to say the least!


This post was originally published on our Director of Education's personal website.

5 Questions with Laura Diorio

"5 Questions with a Playwright" concludes with Laura Diorio from Middletown High School South. We asked Laura to answer five questions about her play or about herself and here are her answers:

Laura Diorio
Middletown High School South

1. What inspired you to write Pretty Girl?

Pretty Girl was written with a generation in mind. I had never written a play before, so when I took this on, I knew I wanted it to mean something. The writing process was significantly influenced by different people. I questioned my friends about their beliefs on social beauty standards and experiences they've had. Some lines in the play are even direct quotes! My inspiration for this play was intended for both friends and strangers. My goal was to showcase the reality that young girls experience all of the time, presented in an honest and relatable setting. I wanted to be a voice for those who are too afraid to express how they feel. I wanted them to know that they are not alone, and everyone goes through what the sisters in the play experience. If I could have at least one person in the audience listen to my play and think, "Hey, she sounds just like me" or, "Wow, I've definitely felt like that before," or "Oh my god, she's absolutely right," then I have done what I set out to do.

2. You were also nominated for a Basie Award for Supporting Actress for a play at your school. Please tell us a little about that play and your role.

Kismine Washington was created by F. Scott Fitzgerald in one of his classic short stories "The Diamond as Big as The Ritz." My drama teacher, Mr. Kozak, took on this hundred year old story and adapted it into a full length drama, which we then performed as our fall play this year. I had the extraordinary privilege of playing Kismine alongside some of the most talented people and friends I will ever know. The experience I gained from this show is unparalleled to anything I have ever done. Taking on a show with characters that have never come to life and a story that has never reached a stage is a rare opportunity that I will forever cherish. To top it all off, I was recently nominated for Best Supporting Actress in the Basie Awards, hosted by Count Basie Theatre which honors excellence in high school theatre. The Diamond as Big as The Ritz won Best Overall Drama and Mr. Kozak won Best Director. To be recognized for such a beautiful role is an honor within itself, and I thank Mr. Kozak and my fellow cast members for bringing the world of Kismine and her unique family to life.

3. You mention in your bio that you’ve written and directed before. What role do you prefer to take in a production (actor, director, writer) and what do you like more about that role than the others?

At Middletown High School South, our theatre program gives students the opportunity to thrive in multiple aspects of the art, and challenges them to take on new experiences. I have gotten the chance to be an actor, a director, and a playwright in the three years I have been at South. I have performed in six shows at South thus far, and have been a writer and director for our One Page Play Festival in the fall and our Ten Page Play Festival in the spring, which are both student-produced. I have loved every second of writing and directing, but my heart lies with acting. Since I was young, I have possessed a strong passion for performance. It has made me increasingly self aware and also provoked me to gain a sense of empathy for others. Performing is an exercise of the mind, body, and heart, and that unique experience is incomparable and irreplaceable.

4. What has been your most memorable theatre experience to date?

I do not have one specific experience in theatre that matters more to me than another. My most memorable theatre experiences are the ones that happen behind closed curtains at South with my favorite people in the world. For me, it is not about the end product. It is about the adventurous process that my cast mates and I take to get there. Theatre is a path that has brought me to some of the greatest people I know, those who have impacted my life for the better. Because of these people, I embrace who I am, and I encourage others to do the same. Every cast is a family, and rehearsals are our quality time together. Sometimes we want to rip each other's hair out, other times we're laughing so hard while foolishly dancing to the YMCA before the start of every show. Because of theatre, the greatest success of all is working with a group to be real under imaginary circumstances. Accomplishing that is the most memorable experience of all.

5. If you could have any super-human power, what would it be, and why?

This was the hardest question of all. After two hours of pondering my options (I wish I was kidding), I have decided that my superpower would be the ability to enter any realm of literature. How cool would it be to jump into the story you're reading? But then... How would I get out? This is why this question took two hours to answer.

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The 2015 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival will take place on June 1st (Junior HS & Elementary plays) and June 2nd (High School plays) on the Florham campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University. You can use these links to make reservations for the June 1 or June 2 performances, or call the PTNJ Education office at 973-514-1787, ext. 21. The Festival is free; however, seating is extremely limited.

5 Questions with Jack Kimber

The 2015 installment of "5 Questions with a Playwright" continues with Jack Kimber from Chatham High School. We asked Jack to answer five questions about his play or about himself and here are his answers:

1. What inspired you to write Listen?

Jack Kimber
Chatham High School

The thing that most inspired me to write Listen was the setting. It may sound a bit out of the ordinary, but as a kid, I have very vivid memories of the nursing home my grandmother resided in Michigan. Every time I visited , everything was always the same; same wall paper, same smell, same furniture and most of all the same people. This enabled me to secure the plot and focus more so on the characters. The hardest part about writing it was putting myself into the characters, but once I figured out the character's voices and all around persona, it was quite simple for me to write the rest. I do not necessarily have any real connection toward the characters but after writing Listen I felt much more of an attachment to the type of personality that both of the characters held. It was important to me to show how a relationship can develop and deepen even between two very unlikely people. In addition, I hope it shows how we have something to learn from everyone.

2. In your bio you mention that you write in other forms including screenwriting and short fiction. In what genre do you most frequently write and what do you like about it?

I really enjoy screenwriting because it allows a lot of freedoms, including the development of characters and the setting.   I have always been a very big enthusiast of the movies and many television shows so as ideas come to me about a certain plot or character, I immediately think about what it would be like in a movie and/or television show.  The thing that mostly lures me to screenwriting is the creative independence that I have when creating a story.

3. You also mention that you are an avid snowboarder, skateboarder, and wakeboarder. How did you start and which of these do you prefer most?

Yes, I guess you could call me somewhat of a “board sport” enthusiast. Snowboarding was the first thing I ever tried when I was four years old and I just loved it so much that I wanted/needed something to take its place in the seasons where there wasn’t any snow. That’s where skateboarding came in. I saw that many of the pro snowboarders were also skateboarding as well.  I just figured why not give it a shot. And, ever since  I have been skateboarding too.  When I was seven years old my family got our first boat and my older brother was the first one who introduced me to wakeboarding. Due to my experiences snowboarding and skating, wakeboarding came quite easy to me and I immediately fell in love with it. I definitely cannot pin-point which one I prefer most considering that it kind of works out that I get to snowboard in the winter, wakeboard in the spring and summer and skateboard all year round. All of these activities have allowed me to experience new things, meet new people and go to some really cool places.

4. What is your most memorable theatre experience to date?

This winter I attended the show The Invisible Hand in New York and one of my favorite actors Justin Kirk had the lead role. Basically the plot of the play, was about a New York investment banker who gets kidnapped by what looks to be Middle Eastern terrorists. The investment banker (Justin Kirk) develops a relationship with the guard who is tending to him and you get to see an insight to the struggles that the guard has, as their relationship turns from captor/guard to  unlikely friends. The Guard struggles trusting his newly found friend and still remaining loyal to his commander.  The thing that I mostly liked about going to this play was the theatre and location. I hadn’t ever been to an off-Broadway show before and it was very interesting to be in such a small yet comfortable theatre and seeing such an amazing show.  It really showed me all the opportunities and insights in which are possible in the playwriting world.

5. If you could have three wishes granted, what would they be?

1. To  go back in time and see the Grateful Dead play in Europe 72’.
2. Play guitar with Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix and Mike Rempel all in the same room.
3. Discover the truth about the disappearance of Amerlia Earhart.

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The 2015 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival will take place on June 1st (Junior HS & Elementary plays) and June 2nd (High School plays) on the Florham campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University. You can use these links to make reservations for the June 1 or June 2 performances, or call the PTNJ Education office at 973-514-1787, ext. 21. The Festival is free; however, seating is extremely limited.

5 Questions with Gabrielle Poisson

The 2015 installment of "5 Questions with a Playwright" continues with Gabrielle Poisson from Newark Academy in Livingston. We asked Gabi to answer five questions about her play or about herself and here are her answers:

Gabrielle Poisson
Newark Academy, Livingston

1.  What inspired you to write Worn Thin?

At the end of my freshman year of high school I took a two-week play-writing intensive with the goal of writing a one-act play.  On the second or third day of the course, my teachers told us to write about a parent-child relationship.  I knew right away that I wanted to look at a single parent and an only child because I thought those dynamics between two people who relied solely on one another, would be very compelling. Worn Thin’s first draft focused on Melanie and her elementary school son, Jared, as she struggled financially and Jared struggled socially at school.  As the play progressed I wanted to raise the stakes so I went back and rewrote it with Jared a few years older, but on the autism-spectrum as well as suffering from post-traumatic stress.  I thought it would be so devastating for Melanie to not only have to raise a child alone, but for that child to be handicapped and for her to have no resources to protect and nurture him.

2. You’ve won awards for your fiction writing, as well. Please tell us a little more about some of the other things you’ve written.

Ever since I was very young, I’ve always been in love with writing, and I’ve always used it as a way to express my feelings or tell stories through poetry or short fiction.  After taking the playwriting intensive last year, however, I found that while I love all forms of writing, I prefer writing plays because I like to get to know a  character through the way they talk.  This year I took a course in creative writing, in which I wrote several short stories, one about a teenage girl with a wandering soul who befriends a young boy conning people out of their money in a lemonade stand, and another about a young man visiting a graveyard and encountering Death itself.  I think my favorite piece this year, however, was my second play, entitled The Blue Dress, which tells the story of Pamena, a fifteen year old girl and the suffocating relationship with her alcoholic mother, Morgana.

3. In your bio you mention that you also perform in musicals. What do you like most about being a performer and a writer? If you had to pick one as your favorite what would that be?

It’s so hard deciding between performing and writing because they go hand in hand to complete the creative process.  I’ve been singing and acting since I could walk, and it has always been a dream of mine to somehow make a career in performing.  Writing, on the other hand is amazing because it is a way of taking an idea or an image in your head and transforming it into art that people can really relate to.

4. What has been your most memorable theatre experience to date?

This year I played Little Sally in my school musical, Urinetown, which was just such an incredible experience.  Initially after being cast, I was hesitant to be really excited because Little Sally is a mostly acting role and when she does sing, it is with a nasally character voice.  As a singer I wanted a part to showcase my voice.  Those feelings of hesitation really quickly went away, however, as I fell in love with this part.  Little Sally is this extremely witty quasi-narrator of the show and I’d never felt more creative freedom with a role before.  Unfortunately, the week of the show, I got a really bad cold and was terrified as I found I was losing my voice.  In the end, I was able to participate in the show, not in full health, but the experience taught me that I really can persevere if I power through.  I have never had more fun or more of a positive response than I received in this role.  It really was a once in a lifetime experience.

5. If you were going on an adventure, who would you take as your travel partner and why?​

If I were going on an adventure, I would bring my big brother, Lyle because he is my favorite person in the world.  Ever since the moment I was born, he has been the person that will laugh at my jokes, support me, and stand by my side through the good times and bad.  We’ve been on many adventures together and there’s no one I could imagine that I’d rather see the world with.

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The 2015 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival will take place on June 1st (Junior HS & Elementary plays) and June 2nd (High School plays) on the Florham campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University. You can use these links to make reservations for the June 1 or June 2 performances, or call the PTNJ Education office at 973-514-1787, ext. 21. The Festival is free; however, seating is extremely limited.

5 Questions with Betsy Zaubler

We begin our 2015 series of "5 Questions with a Playwright" focusing on the four playwrights whose plays have been selected in the High School Division of the NJ Young Playwrights Festival. First up, is Betsy Zaubler from Newark Academy in Livingston. We asked Betsy to answer five questions about her play or about herself and here are her answers:

Betsy Zaubler
Newark Academy, Livingston

1. What inspired you to write Thanksgiving Surprise?

I was inspired to write Thanksgiving Surprise because of the stories about teenagers who come out to their families and are not accepted.  Often, it seems as if the coming out is harder on the family than the person actually coming out.  While these stories are a sad reality, they are not they only reality.  What I wanted to show with Thanksgiving Surprise is that coming out (whether it's as gay, lesbian, transgender etc.) is not always a negative family experience, that there are accepting and embracing families.  I wanted to explore the emotional experience of a teenager coming out in that situation, because even with an accepting family, coming out can be a complex and difficult process.

2. Congratulations on your selection as the Poetry Out Loud winner from you school this year. What poems did you perform as part of the POL competition and why did you choose them? 

For my school competition, I performed "John Lennon" by Mary Jo Salter.  I chose this poem because I love music and it explored how even though people can feel so connected to an artist through their music, they really know nothing about them.  For the regional competition, I performed "Solitude" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox and "The Universe as Primal Scream," by Tracy K. Smith.  I chose "Solitude" because it allowed me to use my acting skills more than the other poems, and I chose "The Universe as Primal Scream" because I liked how it contrasted biblical and scientific theories.

3. When did you start studying Spanish and what do you most look forward to doing in Spain?

I started studying Spanish in 6th grade.  This summer, I'm really excited to live with a host family and be fully immersed in Spanish culture.  I'm also excited to visit Barcelona, which everyone tells me is an amazing city.

4. What has been your most memorable theatre experience to date?

My most memorable theater experience has been directing a children's play at Studio Players, a community theater in Montclair.  It was interesting to see a completely different side of theater and I learned a lot about acting by working with my cast and noticing things that you don't always notice as an actor.  

5.  If you had the opportunity to sit down and have dinner with anyone (living or dead), who would it be and what would be your most burning question?​ 

I would love to have dinner with Billie Joe Armstrong, who is the lead singer and the principal songwriter in Green Day.  I would ask him, specifically with regard to the album American Idiot, how he wrote songs that connected so powerfully to so many people, and how he articulated, with such impact, how people were feeling about America at that time.  

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The 2015 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival will take place on June 1st (Junior HS & Elementary plays) and June 2nd (High School plays) on the Florham campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University. You can use these links to make reservations for the June 1 or June 2 performances, or call the PTNJ Education office at 973-514-1787, ext. 21. The Festival is free; however, seating is extremely limited.

Mayor Proclamation for Madison Young Playwrights Month 2015

On Monday night, May 11, Jim DeVivo (PTNJ's Director of Education), and a few of the 2015 Madison Young Playwrights attended a Borough Council meeting to accept a proclamation from Mayor Robert Conley. The proclamation officially recognized April 2015 to Madison Young Playwrights Month. Upon accepting the award, the students were invited to introduce themselves and talk about their play. Jim provided the following words about the program:

"At the core of an effective education system are the arts. While it is easy to see art for its immediate entertainment value, we must not overlook the greater impact it has as an educational tool. As the Roman philosopher Horace believed: effective art be both "dulce et utile", meaning sweet and useful. Or to put it another way: entertainment and education. In recognizing these young artists tonight, we not only celebrate their achievement, but also encourage their curiousity so that they may continue to learn more about the world and about themselves, and to explore how those two interact.

"We are currently wrapping up the celebration of the 29th annual Madison Young Playwrights program with our final in-school assembly at St. Vincent Martyr School on May 27; however, three plays by Madison students will be further performed in the statewide New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival on June 1st in a production by Playwrights Theatre on the campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University.

"Thank you Mayor Conley and members of the Council for recognizing the creative explorations of these students. And above all, thank you to the students who have shared their imaginations with us, and the teachers, parents, and community who support them. [The students' work] cannot happen without that support. And we encourage our children to continue using their imaginations for many, many years to come."

Local press coverage of the meeting can be found on the TAPintoMadison website.

Day 3 - Readings of the High School plays

Prop chicken for Enter Banquo's Ghost by Miranda Hoyt-Disick.
Our Props Manager made this from newspaper and tape in only 20 minutes!

On Tuesday, June 3, we presented the plays from the High School Division of the 2014 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival along with a special reading of a play from the Living with Disabilities category.

Rosemary Glennon and Seth Jambor in Hurricane Season by Alexa Derman

The day begin with an afternoon of tech rehearsals for the four High School Division plays in which a number of final script changes were implemented. Tech rehearsal is a chance for me to get "production" shots from the Festival, which had to be done with a smart phone. Apologies for some of the blurriness this may have caused!

Cara Ganski and Dan Pellicano in Ink Never Dulls by Talia Green

Dan Pellicano and Timothy Regan in Mechanical Advancement by Emily Donegan

The evening performance began with a special reading of Midnight by Hazel Solender. This play was chosen in our Living with Disabilities category through a grant from VSA, the international organization on arts and disabilities at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, DC. Hazel's script, along with others submitted to the NJ Young Playwrights Festival via the Living with Disabilities category, was sent to VSA for consideration in the annual Playwright Discovery Program.

High School Division plays followed with staged readings given by members of two separate casts. The plays were presented in the following order: Enter Banquo's Ghost by Miranda Hoyt-Disick, Hurricane Season by Alexa Derman, Ink Never Dulls by Talia Green, and Mechanical Advancement by Emily Donegan.

In addition to their selection in the NJ Young Playwrights Festival, the scripts by Talia Green, Emily Donegan, and Alexa Derman were also chosen by the Roxbury Arts Alliance/Roxbury Performing Arts Center for presentation in late July. My Life, My Family, Not My Wallet by Christopher Frick in the Junior HS Division was also selected for this program. In late July, these four plays will be remounted with a new cast and new revisions.

We are also happy to share that this week Alexa Derman is traveling to Los Angeles for the presentation of her play What We Talk About When We Talk About Planned Parenthood, which was a winner in the national young playwrights festival produced by The Blank Theatre.

A fantastic evening of plays from a remarkably talented group of young writers!

You can see additional pictures from the NJ Young Playwrights Festival on our Facebook page here.

High School playwrights and Cast

We again offer our congratulations to everyone who wrote and submitted a play to the Festival. We hope that you continue to share your creative imaginations with us and look forward to receiving a new script from you next year...

... that said ...

There will be some changes to the NJ Young Playwrights format for next year. We will announce some preliminary details within the next few days in order to inform schools of the change so that they can prepare for the fall semester. Further details will be released in the summer. So, please stay tuned!

5 Questions with Miranda Hoyt-Disick

Today we conclude our 5 Questions with a Playwright series for the 2014 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival with a New Jersey resident who attends school in the Bronx!...

Miranda Hoyt-Disick
11th grade, Riverdale Country School

1. What inspired you to write Enter Banquo's Ghost?

On the night of the Tonys sophomore year, I was faced with a challenge. I had to write an updated version of the banquet scene from Macbeth that happened to be due the next day. Coincidentally, I had recently started watching the HBO series Girls, and I thought it might be fun to inject Shakespeare with some good old Hannah Horvath neuroses. I decided that the protagonist, "Beth", would be haunted by the ghost of her old boyfriend, "Robert Banquo". The whole thing was just supposed to be one scene, but I started playing around with the characters and decided upgrade Beth's nervous behavior to a mental break-down, complete with banter and the destruction of a perfectly good chicken.

2. You directed your play for a theatre festival at your school last year. Please tell us more about that experience.

I loved directing my play at school. My producer and assistant director, Madeline Meyer, was amazing about scheduling everything and helping me with the blocking and with giving notes to my actors. We rehearsed during lunch in the drama and film rooms. It was my first experience directing, and I found everyone eager to cooperate and make the play as good as it could be. During the performance, I was pretty much frozen in a state of joint joy/terror, a condition that will probably rear its head again at the next production.

3. In your bio you mention that you play both the guitar and ukulele. When did you begin to play these instruments? What is the biggest difference between playing the guitar and the ukulele?

I began playing guitar in 5th grade and ukulele around this time last year. They're both great instruments, but the ukulele is portable and easier to play in the hallways to the annoyance of everyone, so naturally I prefer it.

4. What has been your most memorable theatre experience to date?

At the beginning of the year, I got to see The Glass Menagerie with Zach Quinto and was crying by the end of the first act. It was a beautiful production that did nothing but enhance my undying love for Tennessee Williams and pretty blatant desire to resurrect him.

5. If you were going on an adventure, who would you take as your travel partner and why?

I didn't even have to think about this one. Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 100%.  If you've seen the show, you understand. If not, first of all, why haven't you seen it, go now, watch all 7 seasons they're on Netflix. Done? Welcome back. Spike is resourceful, good in a fight, and has an amazing habit of commenting on the story going on around him. We only have one of these qualities in common, but still. Definitely Spike. He's a little undead, but it's totally fine. I'd just have to remember a blanket to shield him from the sun (he burns up pretty quickly). 

See Miranda's play Enter Banquo's Ghost at the 2014 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival on Tuesday, June 3 beginning at 7:00 p.m. Performances will be held in the University Center Little Theatre on the campus of Kean University. Please reserve your space by contacting us at njypf@ptnj.org. See you there!

5 Questions with Talia Green

Continuing our 5 Questions with a Playwright series for the 2014 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival with...

Talia Green
11th grade, Bergen County Academies

1. What inspired you to write Ink Never Dulls?

I've always been particularly sensitive towards the subject of domestic abuse, as such violence in one's childhood has the ability to affect his/her perspective of the world for the rest of their lives. I also read often about stories that romanticize abusive relationships, such as Captive in the Dark by CJ Roberts, or Stolen by Lucy Christopher. Though thrilling, stories like these manifest a pretensive light on abuse, as though reshaping it to make it more entertaining. For that reason, I decided to write a play that portrays abuse as all that it is: highly disturbing, and difficult to watch. I am hoping that my play can help absolve the misconceptions that the media helps produce regarding abuse, and can also help teach what to do if placed in a similar situation.  

2. You have won awards for your poetry and social activism. Please tell us more about those experiences.

Writing has been a significant part of my life since before I can remember. I cannot recall a period in my childhood during which I did not carry around my journal to jot down whatever surfaced in my thoughts; I have always been more articulate in my writing than I've been in speech, and this realization led me to writing poetry more seriously and frequently. Only recently, however, have I been able to fulfill what I've yearned to through my poetry and music: write messages that mean more than just my experiences. I have such strong opinions of, and hopes for, us as a progressive society, and I have finally written work that can express those concepts. I believe that if an idea is planted in your head - through a poem, song, or any other medium - it has the incentive to grow into a thought that you construct yourself. Through that, you can reevaluate the way you see things, and allow that idea to widen your field of perception. This is what I hope to accomplish through my writing, and am honored to have been awarded for some of my works that succeed in such a task.

3. In addition to your writing, you are a vocalist. What kinds of music do you typically perform?

Though I tend to perform a wide range of genres, I mostly perform soul/blues. I also write indie ballads. (I may have just invented a genre of music.)

4. What has been your most memorable theatre experience to date?

This past winter, I performed as Reverend Hightower in the Bergen County Academies' production of Bat Boy. It was the most rewarding theatrical experience I could ask for. I was able to develop a character so unlike the serious characters I tend to write; the Reverend was silly, exciting, and extremely individual. I was also able to intertwine my love for soul music to this crazy character.

5. If you had the opportunity to sit down and have dinner with anyone (living or dead), who would it be and what would be your most burning question?

I would love to sit down with Mathew Arnold, and ask him what inspired him to write the poem "The Voice". That is the first poem I've ever really connected to, and up to now, It's still my favorite poem. My second burning question would be to see the original copy of "The Voice", including all of his pen blotches and scratched lines and illegible handwriting. You can tell so much about a poem and it's writer by the way it's written.


See Talia's play Ink Never Dulls at the 2014 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival on Tuesday, June 3 beginning at 7:00 p.m. Performances will be held in the University Center Little Theatre on the campus of Kean University. Please reserve your space by contacting us at njypf@ptnj.org. See you there!

5 Questions with Emily Donegan

Continuing our 5 Questions with a Playwright series for the 2014 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival with...

Emily Donegan
11th grade, Bergen County Academies

1. What inspired you to write Mechanical Advancement?

I was inspired to write Mechanical Advancement by listening to Weird Al's song 'Virus Alert' about a wacky computer virus that has inconvenient yet hilarious effects on the victim in real life. It got me thinking about the human-technology relationship.

2. In your bio you mention that “the backstage realm is particularly dear” to you. What do you like about working backstage?

I love everything about working backstage. I love that there is a whole other side to a show that the audience doesn't see, a secret hectic flurry of costumes and lights and having to think fast on your feet.

3. You also mention that you enjoy cooking. What is your favorite thing to make?

My favorite thing to cook is jell-o.

4. What has been your most memorable theatre experience to date?

My most memorable theatre experience was when I accidentally broke a plate on stage, then sliced my hand open as I tried to pick up the pieces. There was blood and glass everywhere, and we all just had to work around it. It was great.

5.  If you could have three wishes granted, what would they be?

The problem with wishes granted is that they almost always have some kind of ironic twist. I'd keep it simple (so nothing could go wrong) and wish for a steak, a Dr. Pepper, and world peace.

See Emily's play Mechanical Advancement at the 2014 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival on Tuesday, June 3 beginning at 7:00 p.m. Performances will be held in the University Center Little Theatre on the campus of Kean University. Please reserve your space by contacting us at njypf@ptnj.org. See you there!

5 Questions with Alexa Derman

With the 2014 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival just a few days away, it is time for our annual 5 Questions with a Playwright series: NJYPF edition! We go alphabetically by last name and present a playwright from the High School Division each day. So, today we begin with...

Alexa Derman
12th grade, Westfield High School

 1.      What inspired you to write Hurricane Season?

Hurricane Season was initially part of a series of short plays by a number of playwrights called SOS: Stories of Sandy performed by Contagious Drama Workshop. When I was offered the chance to write for the production, I knew immediately I was going to write something about mortality. Sandy was a crazy experience for me because of the same reason as Kim, in the play -- it burst the illusion of invincibility provide by growing up in the suburbs. I was actually assigned my actors in advance, before I wrote it, and when I met with the pair, a (relatively shy) boy and a (relatively outgoing) girl, they both said they wanted to play roles that challenged them. Thus, for the boy I created the boisterous Joey and for the girl, the more reserved Kim.

2.      You have won multiple awards for your writing in a variety of genres. How does your writing process differ between forms?

I think my writing process doesn't differ so much between forms as between types. What I mean is, I have stories that are very dialogue-based the way Hurricane Season is, and the process for those works are similar: usually some argument just explodes out of me around 2 am and then I refine it. But I also have plays and prose pieces that are more "involved," more focused around a single character, and more collage-based -- right now I'm writing a play that collapses into a Shakespeare one at its climax. For those pieces, I usually end up doing a lot of research and planning. 

3.      You have also won awards for your work as a hair and make-up artist. Please tell us more about that work!

I'm the hair and makeup artist in my school theatre department, and it was definitely a happy accident -- my director asked me out of the blue to take over my sophomore year, and I jumped in despite having zero experience. Many hours of YouTube videos and practice later, it's become something I really love to do. We did Bat Boy last year, in 2013, and creating a half-bat half-boy mutant was one of my favorite projects. Every day it took about an hour to get him ready, but it was worth it!

4.      What has been your most memorable theatre experience to date?

It's a tie. This past fall, my high school did a production of Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses, based on the Ovid of the same name. It's a beautiful show about myth and transformation -- and it also took place in a massive pool we built in our pit! The cast and crew was very small, and the show was gorgeous and emotional. It was a great final fall play. (And then we were lucky enough to win Outstanding Overall Production at the MSU Theatre Night Awards!) On the flip side, four or five years ago I was Dorothy an all-girls cast of The Wiz at my hippie drama sleepaway camp, and even though it wasn't of the highest "quality" I had such a fun time jammin' to "Ease on Down" and bopping with the eight-year-old munchkins. Just a really, really fun time. 

5.      If you could have any super-human power, what would it be and why?

Definitely super-human memory. Not only would it save me time on Calculus homework, but also because it would be really cool to just be able to launch into page-long speeches and poems whenever they feel relevant.

See Alexa's play Hurricane Season at the 2014 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival on Tuesday, June 3 beginning at 7:00 p.m. Performances will be held in the University Center Little Theatre on the campus of Kean University. Please reserve your space by contacting us at njypf@ptnj.org. See you there!

Putting it together

George:
Bit by bit,
Putting it together...
Piece by piece -
Only way to make a work of art.
Every moment makes a contribution,
Every little detail plays a part.
Having just a vision's no solution,
Everything depends on execution:
Putting it together -
That's what counts!

From the song "Putting it Together" in Act II, of Sunday in the Park with George by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim. Thanks to LyricWiki for the words!

Drawing inspiration from Mr. Sondheim again today as a few more pieces to the NJ Young Playwrights Festival come together today. We've had a series of computer glitches in the past few days that have slowed things down. Back on our feet today and getting final details in place to fully launch the Festival in June.

We are adding some new components to the program this year including a mentorship for each high school playwrights with a professional playwright who will be working alongside them as a dramaturg. Keep posted to this blog for more news as it is available.

Announcing the 2014 New Jersey Young Playwrights

Congratulations to the 2014 New Jersey Young Playwrights! (Plays are listed alphabetically by the playwrights' last names)

HIGH SCHOOL (grades 10-12)

- Hurricane Season by Alexa Derman

- Mechanical Advancement by Emily Donegan

- Ink Never Dulls by Talia Green

- Enter Banquo's Ghost by Miranda Hoyt-Disick

JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL (grades 7-9)

- My Life, My Family, Not My Wallet by Christopher Frick

- Accounting for Change by Elizabeth Hendy

- An Underdog Story by Morgan McCauley

ELEMENTARY (grades 4-6)

- So Let's Get Cooking by Lily Bauer

- Zoe Verrazano's Big Adventure by Katie Dore

- A Good Story, A Beautiful Life by Ashley Jiang

- I Beat the Bully by Amanda Kefalas

An announcement regarding the REVOLUTIONARY PLAYS division will be coming soon.

Plays from the Elementary and Junior HS divisions will be presenting as readings on Monday, June 2.

Plays from the High School division will be presented as staged readings on Tuesday, June 3.

High school playwrights will also receive a 2014 New Jersey Governors Award in Arts Education at a special event in Trenton on Thursday, May 1.

For more information about the Festival, or the playwrights, please visit our website at http://www.njypf.org

Congratulations to the playwrights whose work was selected for the Festival and to all of those who submitted a script!

Throwback Thursday - NJYPF 2006

For Throwback Thursday, the High School playwrights from the 2006 NJ Young Playwrights Festival:

l to r: Katie Hathaway, Bonnie Torre, Megan O'Brien, Brittany Wallace

Guest Post from NJYPF reader Guleraana Mir

Today's guest blog post is from Guleraana Mir, a theatre practitioner and writer, who read plays for the NJ Young Playwrights Festival in both the first and second rounds. Based in London, Guleraana works with young people from around the world to create new works for the theatre. We thought it would be interesting to hear her perspective on the characters and themes that she sees in this work and how plays by New Jersey young playwrights compare. Enjoy!

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Working as a teaching artist with young people in New York, London and South America, I have come to realise that teenagers are essentially the same all over the world. Sure, cultures vary, political landscapes are vastly different and young people experience a number of socio-economic climates, but it seems they are moved to write, to create art not by what surrounds them, but by what they feel. I don’t say this to perpetuate stereotypes of shallow, angst-ridden beings steeped in the Hollywood notion of high-school cliques, but because it inspires me that sometimes, what is outside of the teenage bubble is just not interesting enough.

In Brazil, working with students from the favelas, I expected tales of drug lords, in the East End of London I presumed my first-generation immigrant families would regale me with stories of how they came to be in this bustling metropolis, in deepest Brooklyn I waited for recollections of gunfights on doorsteps. What I actually received could easily have been transplanted from one area to another.

Young people write about struggles in love and friendship, they write about relationships with their families, they write about school, about being human. There are linguistic differences, the towns and cities they describe are worlds apart but the themes remain the same. I’m always struck by the honesty that teenagers portray in their dialogue, not yet realising that we don’t always speak the way that we think we do. They pay particular attention to colloquialisms and often demonstrate a blissful naiveté that adult writers are too jaded to find.

This year I read the plays for NJYP alongside a number of full-length plays for a producer friend of mine searching for a new project in London. I can honestly say that I would rather have pitched her a number of the short plays written by junior-high school students than the over-ambitious, poorly executed plays I was forced to reject.

Schemes like the NJYP nurture creativity when it is as it’s brightest. The imagination and enthusiasm is apparent in the writers’ words and I’ve been wholly inspired this year. I look forward to seeing the shortlist of winners and reading the strongest plays in the competition. To all the young people who submitted, well done, and please, continue writing. The future of engaging and exciting theatre experiences is in your hands!

Guleraana Mir is co-founder of London Playwriting Lab, a brand new script development initiative created for writers, by writers. She was previously Artistic Director of First Foot Theatre Productions in New York City. Guleraana currently delivers a mixture of curriculum enrichment through drama, applied-theatre, and nutrition workshops whilst desperately trying to finish her first full-length play. Her writing credits include:

Merry ******* Christmas- Drayton Arms, London, December 2013

Dossier- Camden Peoples’ Theatre, London, November 2013

If I had a Hammer- Camden Peoples’ Theatre, London, February 2013

Betty- Pless Hall Black Box Theatre, New York, NY, March 2010

Mannequin Mount Carmel Theatre Company, Brooklyn, NY, March 2010

Voodoo Child Pless Hall Black Box Theatre, New York, NY, September 2008

Entering the Final Round!

Both the Elementary and High School divisions have now entered their respective final rounds of judging. The Junior HS division, always the largest of the three, is going to take a little more time before it is ready. However, I will meet with the Selection Panel on March 21 to discuss each of the finalist scripts and to select the plays from each division that will be presented at the 2014 NJ Young Playwrights Festival in June.

Stay tuned!

More advice for young playwrights

Today on Twitter I connected with Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights, Bring It On: the Musical) while he was online and asked if he had any advice for young playwrights:

Reading scripts today!

The view from my desk as I read script submissions for the 2014 NJYPF.

Junior HS & Elementary scripts due today!

Junior HS (grades 7-9) and Elementary (grades 4-6) are due today by 11:59 pm. Please see our submission guidelines on the website for any last minute instruction, or answers. (Link here)

Also, I cannot confirm receipt of scripts. However, if there is any trouble with your submission - typically a formatting issue with the file, or if we get a Title Page survey and no script - you will be contacted directly via the email address provided.

Thanks!