@dramatistsguild @bystephenkaplan @bhawmik @mindidickstein @bvmbvm9

I’m writing this as I just finished two amazing days meeting with all of the Regional Reps from around the country and the one word that kept coming up was “community.” One of the things I’m loving most about my role as representative is getting to meet so many of you at the various events we’ve hosted in the past months at NJ Rep, McCarter, Dreamcatcher Rep, and South Camden Theatre Company. With this in mind and as we gear up for the National Conference where our larger community comes together to celebrate the work we do, I wanted to take this opportunity to celebrate a few of our own by focusing on three incredibly diverse New Jersey-based members.

Sudipta Bhawmik’s plays, including his latest Anahuta Sandhya or An Uninvited Evening, tell the stories of the struggles and contradictions of first generation Bengali/Indian immigrants and are written in Bengali, English or sometimes both. His home theatre group is ECTA (pronounced Ekta which means “Unity” in most Indian languages) whose mission is to tell their own stories through theater and other performing arts media. The group often performs at Edison Valley Playhouse and Bhawmik credits living in New Jersey as helping to give purpose to his writing about the stories of immigrants.

Mindi Dickstein writes musicals, including lyrics for the Broadway musical Little Women and book for The Wind in the Willows Christmas commissioned by Two River Theatre where it had its world premiere in 2012 with a return engagement in 2013. Like many others, Dickstein came to NJ via NYC as she longed for the outdoors and a quieter life away from the city and finds that, “there is something about being rooted here that makes me focus more than I did when I lived in the city.” From her time at Two River, she is especially fond of the town of Red Bank and the rich and varied repertoire of plays and musicals that John Dias, Two River’s artistic director, continues to produce there. She is currently keeping very busy writing lyrics for a musical based on the movie Benny & Joon, with music by Nolan Gasser and book by Kirsten Guenther; lyrics for a musical based on the novel Snow In August with music by Peter Melnick and book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa; and lyrics for Faerie Tale, with music by Peter Melnick and book by Chantal Bilodeau.

Benjamin V. Marshall was the most recent playwright-in-residence at Passaic County Community College and received a 2012 playwriting grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts (and he is quick to acknowledge NJ as being one of less than a handful of states still granting money to individual playwrights). Born in Newark and raised in East Orange he used to avoid mentioning NJ and was coy with setting plays in NJ: “I would write ‘an urban city in the Northeast’ instead of Newark. Now I go out of my way to incorporate it. It’s not so much about Jersey pride; it is about feeling and incorporating the landscape that is around you. Here in Jersey, the worst urban decay sometimes abuts a well-tended lawn. Trees and wildlife creep around busy highways.” This mix of gardens and grit is prevalent in much of his work along with race, class, homophobia and privilege. In each play he tries to invent a new universe and his last four plays range from a biography set in the 1700s to the contemporary suburbs and is written in verse. He is currently at work on The Galilee House, concerning an African-American professor who wants to refurbish an old house that was once a way station for the Underground Railroad.

If you have a chance to support any of these three local playwrights, I hope you will. And if you or another NJ playwright you enjoy has an upcoming project you’d like to share with our group, please visit our NJ Dramatists Guild Facebook page.

I hope to see many of you at the 3^rd National Conference in La Jolla and at other future NJ events.

skaplan@dramatistsguild.com

Photo (above): Maureen Nevin Duffy, Charles Leipart, and Mary Jane Walsh at a January Guild event at New Jersey Rep. Photographer: Brendon Votipka.

Photo (above): Benjamin V. Marshall. Photographer: Carl Santiago.

Photo (above): Mindi Dickstein

Photo (above): Sudipta Bhawmik