SPOTLIGHT ON A NEW JERSEY THEATER:
The Playwrights Theatre, founded in 1986, is a community of professional playwrights, theatre artists and art educators that provides opportunities for writers to develop their works in a nurturing environment and connect with new audiences.
- Our New Play Development Program is a multi-step process through which playwrights, theatre artists, and audiences collaborate to bring selected texts from rough draft to finished production.
- Our Education Programs introduce students of all ages and backgrounds to the possibilities inherent in thinking and communicating creatively.
- The New Jersey Writers Project provides hands-on workshops led by professional writers-in-residence to students in schools and community centers throughout the state.
We place an equal emphasis on New Play Development and Educational activities, and encourage our community and audiences to participate fully in both.
The current production is "Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie" Read our review.
Overview and History
Cited four times by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for excellence and twice the recipient of a Governor's Award for outstanding service to the arts and arts education, Playwrights Theatre fulfills its mission through two programs, the New Play Development Program and the New Jersey Writers Project.
The multi-step New Play Development Program is designed to work closely with playwrights on the nurturing of their plays and prepare them for full-fledged productions at producing theatres. The phases are:
- Roundtable Readings - private, sit-down readings around a table with four hours of rehearsal.
- Concert Readings - public sit-down readings with twenty hours of rehearsal.
- Staged Readings - public readings, performed script-in-hand, minimal blocking, with twenty-five hours of rehearsal.
- Premiere Productions - which are fully-produced plays utilizing all technical elements.
Plays can enter the process at any of the first three phases, and some travel through the whole process. Audience feedback is elicited at each of the levels, and Playwrights Theatre works with each playwright to develop a work plan for each phase, with an official follow-up and evaluation of each step of the process.
Playwrights Theatre maintains its commitment to supporting writers for the stage. Our reputation for paying close attention to playwrights and the playwriting process continues to attract exciting new writers from around the nation while providing ongoing support for those writers who have worked with us before.
Since Playwrights Theatre is a new play development theatre, our outward success is best measured by the works that move on to production after having passed through our development process.
There have been some significant successes. Our November 2001 production (co-produced with Passage Theatre, NJ) of The Book of Candy, book & lyrics by Susan Dworkin, music by Mel Marvin, (featuring Adam Heller & Martin Vidnovic) was a critical hit and broke all box office records at Playwrights Theatre. Our Winter 2001 production of Kim Merrill’s Criminal Acts received a staged reading this season at the Women’s Project & Productions, NYC featuring Jessica Hecht.
Our Spring 2000 production of our commissioned work Radium Girls by Dolores Whiskeyman (funded in part by the NEA) has received several productions nationwide and was voted Best New Play in NJ by The Star-Ledger. Playwrights Theatre's commission of a radio play by Rufus Caleb, The Rehearsal, (February 2000 production), (funded in part by the NEA) continues to air on National Public Radio Affiliates, was selected by the New Harmony Festival to be developed into a stage play, and was subsequently selected to be published in Applause Books Best Short Plays of 1997-98 in May 1999. Our 1999-2000 production of Guillermo Reye’s A Southern Christmas (AT&T OnStage funding) won the National Hispanic Playwriting Award and his play Miss Consuelo, (1997-98 Production) was subsequently produced by Urban Stages, NYC. Our 1996-97 commissioned work, Rowing to America: The Immigrant Project, has been published by the Dramatic Publishing Co., and last year was Dramatic’s most requested play script. Playwrights Theatre’s co-production of Genesis has seen productions at the Lamb’s Theatre in NYC and at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh. Over the past four years, plays by Keith Glover, familiar to Playwrights Theatre (Coming of the Hurricane and Thunder Knocking on the Door), have played at a number of regional theatres (Denver Theatre Center, Arena Stage, Crossroads Theatre and The Alabama Shakespeare Festival), and An Asian Jockey in Our Midst by Carter Lewis was performed at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and at the Roundhouse Theatre in Washington. Other plays developed at Playwrights Theatre have gone on to future productions. Syncopation by Alan Knee and Spine by Bill C. Davis were produced at the George St. Playhouse. Kitty Chen’s Eating Chicken Feet was co-produced by The Women’s Project & Productions and Pan-Asian Rep, and Haris Orkin’s DaDa was produced by American Stage in Teaneck, NJ. Come As You Are (N. Richard Nash), Appointment With a High Wire Lady (Russell Davis), Banner (Kate Clark), Any Friend of Percy D’Angelino Is A Friend of Mine (Jason Milligan) have all been produced Off-Broadway.
Actors who have appeared on the Playwrights Theatre stage include Allison Janney, David Strathairn, Frances McDormand, Julie Harris, William Schallert, John Astin, Jay O. Sanders, Jayne Atkinson, Joe Morton, Maryann Plunkett, Daniel Jenkins, and Theresa Merritt.
Eeducational programs have become a national model for comprehensive all-inclusive creative writing curricula. Taken together, Playwrights Theatre’s writing program, The New Jersey Writers Project, reaches 17,000 students a year in all 21 counties of New Jersey. Poetry, prose and playwriting are taught in this program, with specific initiatives focusing on special constituencies: the Spanish Language Initiative teaches playwriting and poetry residencies completely in Spanish and produces one Spanish-language play annually at the NJ Young Playwrights Festival; the K through 8 Initiative provides playwriting and assembly programs to needy elementary schools throughout the state; the Newark Young Playwrights Program teaches over 400 youngsters annually at school and community sites throughout Newark; the Special Needs Program works with the NJ Juvenile Justice System teaching Juvenile Offenders writing and performance skills; and the Madison Young Playwrights Program is quite possibly the only playwriting program nationwide that teaches in every school in an entire school district. The Chil’Arts program, which taught playwriting in a housing project in Perth Amboy, was featured in an NEA publication Art Works!, as one of 12 outstanding arts programs working in partnership with drug abuse prevention agencies across the country.
Playwrights Theatre is now providing professional development workshops designed to train teachers to work with poetry, prose and playwriting in the classroom. Through our program, teachers receive certification fulfilling their NJ in-service training requirements to implement the NJ Core Curriculum Content Standards for the Performing Arts.
The New Jersey Writers Project is the largest creative writing residency program in the country and since its inception, over 150,000 students have been served through 1,800 residencies at various sites throughout the state. Additionally, more than 45,000 students, teachers and parents have participated as members of the audience for the assembly and festival programs.
This year, for the fourth time, Playwrights Theatre has been designated as a Distinguished Arts Organization by the NJ State Council on the Arts, the Council’s highest honor. In 1996, Playwrights Theatre received an award from Governor Whitman as an outstanding arts organization and in 1998 recognized Artistic Director John Pietrowski with a Governor’s Award as the state’s outstanding arts educator. Playwrights Theatre’s union affiliations include Actors’ Equity Association, Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, Dramatist Guild, United Scenic Artists of America and Local 21/ Musicians Union. PTNJ is a senior member of the New Jersey Theatre Alliance (NJTA), and the National New Play Network (NNPN). (Currently, John Pietrowski is the Treasurer of the Board of Directors for NNPN.)
Visit www.ptnj.org or call the box office at 973-514-1787 X10 for information on current and future productions. Performances take place at Playwrights Theatre, 33 Green Village Road in Madison, NJ.
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