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!

Casting annoucement: actors from Premiere Stages & Kean University

You're getting a sense of the plays that will premiere at the NJ Young Playwrights Festival next week, but who will you see perform? We bring together actors from a variety of locations, but try to hire as many New Jersey-based artists as we can. Some of what helps in this goal is our production partnership with Premiere Stages @ Kean University. Premiere not only helps provide the location for the Festival, but also connections to the talent pool within the Kean University Department of Theatre. We've been fortunate to cultivate relationships with a number of great actors from the university and continue to do so with recent graduates.

Timothy Regan (Class of 2008) has the longest tenure of our current group of Kean actors having performed with us in a number of young playwrights festivals and in-school assemblies of student written work. Tim has traveled extensively with ArtsPower National Touring Theatre and was most recently seen in Our Town at George Street Playhouse. This week makes his fourth appearance in the NJ Young Playwrights Festival!


Cara Ganski (Class of 2014) first performed in the NJ Young Playwrights Festival in 2012 making her three year tenure with the program the second longest on record. Cara has performed in the Premiere Stages productions of Farragut North and A Beautiful Dark in addition to a variety of roles in Kean University productions. Additionally, Cara is a teaching artist, Disney princess impersonator, and has evaluated script submissions for the NJYPF contest. See what else she is up to on her website at www.caraganski.com.

Kelley McAndrews (Class of 2014) appeared on the Kean stage in roles from Penny Pingleton in Hairspray to Lady Macbeth! (You can see video of these performances and more on her website at http://kelleymcandrews31.wix.com/kelleymcandrews). Kelley first performed with Playwrights Theatre in our local program the Madison Young Playwrights Festival and we're thrilled to have her back again for NJYPF!

Daniel Pellicano (Class of 2013) is no stranger to Playwrights Theatre having performed in a reading of Another Spring by Yasmine Beverly Rana this past April. He received great mentions (NY Times and Talkin' Broadway) for his performance in Premiere Stage's 2013 production of A Beautiful Dark in which he performed with Dana Benningfield (who will also join the Festival cast this year); Daniel also performed as Macbeth opposite Kelley McAndrew during his senior year at Kean.

You can see all four actors in readings of plays by Junior HS and Elementary students at the Festival on Monday, June 2 and in the staged reading of High School plays on Tuesday, June 3. We look forward to seeing you there!