@dramatistsguild @bystephenkaplan

Happy New Year! As we ring in 2015, NJ members can look back at our successful first ever state-wide event, hosted in October at Luna Stage. Members from all over the state mingled before seeing DG-member Nikkole Salter’s fantastic world premiere of Lines in the Dust and heard Salter speak at a talkback afterwards. It was a great start to our 2014-15 event programming and I’m very excited about our upcoming events at the McCarter and New Jersey Repertory Company.

In anticipation of our next event, I had the privilege of sitting down with Executive Producer and co-founder of NJ Rep, Gabor Barabas, to talk about its incredible history which began seventeen years ago and has involved the production of over 100 new plays, and, for its intense focus on new plays, was awarded the 2012 National Theatre Company Award from the American Theatre Wing.

NJ Rep’s Mission

“When we got the building we decided that we would be committed to a very specific mission - the development of new plays. A very non-pragmatic decision for a theatre to make – almost suicidal because that’s not how you build a new theatre. We said we’re gonna do new plays or die…we want to make a contribution to the American stage.”

Submission Process

“We decided early on that we would have an open submission policy which puts great stress on the theatre with our limited resources and our limited personnel, but we’re committed to processing all those scripts…[To submit all you need to do is send an] electronic copy and a hello…We didn’t use to have restrictions as to cast size but when the economy collapsed…we sat down and said we have to lay low and stabilize because we don’t know what’s coming down the pike. At this time we restrict our cast size to four or less.”

Development Process

“We get about 500 scripts a year and from those we select about 20-25 for developmental readings. We produce six-eight plays a year…About 85% of our Main Stage productions come from the reading series. Many times readings are like a dead end or revolving door at a theatre but for us readings are a part of a continuum from reading to another reading and then maybe a year or two down the line to a full production…We don’t adhere to any style or genre or theme…We do comedies, dramas, musicals. We do plays that are absurdist and potentially inaccessible to an American public. When we do readings we never look at the audience’s response. We’ll have readings where the audience comes out beaming saying, ‘Oh, you’ve got to do this play.’ And while we enjoyed it, we don’t do it. Then we’ve had plays where they come out saying, ‘You know I really didn’t like that, I didn’t understand it,’ and we’ll do the play because we see something in it and we’re excited by the challenge of making them see what we saw…So we’re like a laboratory for new works hidden and sequestered in Long Branch, NJ.”

Secret to Survival

“Not sure if this is a secret but it’s sheer stubbornness because there have been moments. But we did decide early on we weren’t going to modify the mission. The fact that we’re small enough so we don’t have to fill a 350-seat house helps. The tail doesn’t wag the dog. We will frequently do a play that we know will not immediately resonate at the box office and where we know we’re probably going to lose money and we’ve somehow got to figure out how to protect ourselves against that but we say, ‘No, this playwright’s voice needs to be heard and we seem to be the ones on the line to do it and we’ll figure it out somehow.’”

To read more about NJ Rep, please visit their website at www.njrep.org and look out for the date announcement of our upcoming event there.

skaplan@dramatistsguild.com

Photo: (above) Dana Benningfield, Maureen Silliman, David Van Pelt in a scene from the world premiere of Elaine Smith’s Angels and Ministers of Grace.

Photo: (above) Benjamin Sterling and John G. Williams in a scene from the world premiere of Richard Strand’s Butler

Photo: (above) Facade of NJ Rep. Photographer: SuzAnne Barabas

Photo: (above) NJ members at the Luna Stage Meet-and-Greet

Photo: (above, left to right) Cheryl Katz, Luna Stage Artistic Director; Nikkole Salter and Stephen Kaplan at the talkback for Salter’s Lines in the Dust. Photographer: Brendon Votipka (NJ Young Ambassador)