@dramatistsguild @KimStinson 

In January 2017, Dramatists Guild members Susan Steadman and Brad Field were involved in the Port City Playwrights Project’s (PCPP) first full production. Common Place, Uncommon Encounters was produced in Wilmington, North Carolina, at the Cape Fear Playhouse.

The piece explored the adventures of a rest area attendant through a series of scenes, each written by a different playwright. True to the episodic plot structure, the scenes each told a separate story of people driving on the interstate who stopped at the rest area over the period of one day. The pieces were connected by the character of the rest area’s one employee with those interstitial pieces written by Steadman.

Steadman and Field were two of the six playwrights involved in the production with Steadman also directing. Steadman started the PCPP a few years ago and has led it from a fledgling group interested in playwriting to become a fully organized not-for-profit entity for which she serves as the Executive Director. Holding a PhD in theatre, Steadman is a published playwright. Field is an award-winning playwright who also writes fiction and serves as the group’s Vice President. His work has been seen at The Cleveland Playhouse, Madison Rep, and on a showboat on the Ohio River. A retired academic, Field is now concentrating on his writing.

Steadman said of the experience of putting together their first fully realized production, “This has been a rewarding challenge. This group of writers has so much talent. I’m privileged to work with their material.”

The PCPP has grown enough under Steadman’s leadership that they hired technicians, including a costume designer, for this first full production.

Common Place, Uncommon Encounters received a review by the local Wilmington paper. In her critique of the production, Bridget Callahan of the Star News says, “What’s interesting is how different each scene really is as each individual writer’s voice comes through. Obvious stylistic differences exist between a scene with an older couple, another with a couple just meeting and one about the interactions of strangers in the bathrooms. Some scenes are heavier and darker while others rely on broad humor.”

Since 2014, the group has done staged readings, the most recent of which were held in April 2017 with a follow-up set of readings scheduled for this coming fall as, according to Steadman, the members had enough pieces ready that they needed to split the readings into two events.

According to their website, the 501c3 organization is, “… a community of playwrights and screenwriters in the greater Wilmington, NC, area that supports members at all levels of development, giving them an opportunity to hone their craft in order to create high-quality work.” The group holds regular meetings where members’ writing is read and discussed. More information on the group can be found at their website, https://portcityplaywrights.wordpress.com, or on their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/PCPPinWilm/.

Look for their first playwriting contest with a call for one-acts coming in the near future.

kstinson@dramatistsguild.com

Common Place, Uncommon Encounters

@dramatistsguild @kimstinson

What happens when a produced, published and award-winning playwright moves from a major metropolitan area to a smaller city in a state whose professional theatres are spread from coast to mountains and take hours to drive between? Does her playwriting career suffer or thrive? Looking at the biography for Jacqueline E. Lawton, it is easy to see her thriving with her move from Washington, D.C. to Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

In addition to writing plays, Lawton currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the school of Dramatic Arts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), one of sixteen public universities in the state. Lawton’s success as a dramaturg and playwright has continued, as well.

She is a recipient of the 2015-2016 Kenan Institute’s Creative Collaboratory Project Grant which is an opportunity that would not have been open to her had she stayed in the D.C. area. The grant is to fund Lawton’s writing a play, Ardeo. The play is to explore the “personal narratives from health practitioners and patients at the North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center at UNC-CH.” Lawton is to begin working on the project in February. According to Lawton, “this play will highlight the power, impact, and significance of narrative medicine to create new stories of healing and understanding.” After conducting interviews with staff and patients, Lawton will have two months to write the script for the public reading scheduled in May. North Carolina members should look for emails in April with information about a meeting that is to be held in conjunction with the play’s reading.

Lawton is happy with her move down south, which she made about a year ago. “It’s a beautiful state with endless blue skies,” she commented. “The biggest transition was learning how to write around so much sunshine!”

Getting used to a different lifestyle has been good for her as, “The pace of living is slower, the food is great, and it’s an affordable place to live well. I have more time to write than ever before, which is good because I’ve got a number of commissions that need to be written!”

Those of us who are from North Carolina know that it is a place where one can carve and etch out a career; however, sometimes those outside of our fantastic state may have different conceptions of what it is like here. With this in mind, I asked Lawton whether she felt her moving to North Carolina had slowed the pace of her career at all.

“I don’t know how much further my career would be if I had ever lived in New York…and I may live there one day,” she replied. “I do know that living in D.C. helped me to establish myself in a way that living in Texas, where I grew up, wouldn’t have. Moving to Chapel Hill hasn’t negatively impacted my career at all. I’m still part of the national conversation and my work is being read and presented throughout the country.”

Lawton sums up her feelings about her move when she states that she does not, “know what it means to be a North Carolina playwright, yet…but I look forward to finding out and seeing how it impacts my voice as a writer.”

Jacqueline E. Lawton - photo by Jason Hornick

kstinson@dramatistsguild.com

@dramatistsguild @kimstinson

Having flown away from The Dramatists Guild’s Second National Conference less than a week ago, I feel renewed and refreshed as a writer. It was amazing to connect with other playwrights from around the country to discuss craft as well as share ideas. This is happening not just on a national level at the Guild conferences every two years, but is happening on a monthly basis on the local level. Here in North Carolina, we have at least three playwriting groups. North Carolina has three geographically diverse sections of the state – mountains, piedmont and coast. Oddly enough, each of these sections is home to its own playwriting group.

In the mountain region, there is the Lost Playwrights of Western North Carolina. Run by Ludy Wilkie, this group meets once a month. Typically meeting at the Hendersonville Library, they sometimes change meeting locations. The group shares their collective theatrical experience with one another through reading members’ works and providing feedback. There are no dues associated with this group.

In the piedmont area, The Greensboro Playwrights’ Forum (GPF) also meets once a month on the second Wednesday at 7 p.m. They have a writing assignment for each month that is given prior to the meeting. Playwrights then bring their response to the writing assignment to share with the group for feedback. One example of a past writing assignment is, “Write a short play that takes place on a front porch. A weather system of some kind is coming in or is already there. Use the line, ‘How many can you fit in there?’”

GPF also conducts readings of members’ plays at the meetings. This group has a long history of producing plays chosen through various contests in addition to holding the monthly meetings. The meetings are at the Greensboro Cultural Center at 200 N. Davie Street. The meetings are open to the public, but in order to be a full member, one must pay a yearly membership fee of $25.

The coastal region has the youngest playwriting group as it was started early in 2013 by DG member Susan Steadman. Steadman moved from the Atlanta area to Wilmington and had trouble finding an already established group. So, she began her own. The Port City Playwrights’s Project (PCPP) meets at Old Books on Front Street at 249 N. Front Street in Wilmington. At the meetings, the group reads writing by members as chosen at a previous meeting. The works are discussed in a respectful and open way so that playwrights can improve their work. PCPP hopes to produce some of their members’ work in the future. Current plans are to have their first readings sometime around Valentine’s Day 2014.

All of these groups are doing something that the Guild advocates: They are making things happen for themselves rather than waiting for opportunities that may never appear. After attending the “Self-Production Primer” by Roland Tec and Rebecca Stump at the conference, I am an even stronger advocate of this philosophy myself. If you are a North Carolina playwright in search of a writing group, join one of these mentioned here. Or, if these groups are not close enough to you, start one on your own.

kstinson@dramaatistsguild.com