Beginnings…
My name is Laura Martin and I will be spending my summer helping out with the PlayPenn summer conference in Philly, and blogging about my experience! I will begin with a little introduction to myself and to PlayPenn…
I am a senior philosophy major at Haverford College, and have enjoyed acting ever since I played a very young Golde in my seventh grade production of “Fiddler on the Roof”. I have written a couple of short plays in the past (one about a very strange guidance counselor, and another about an odd situation at a bus stop); favorite plays of mine include “Doubt” by John Patrick Shanley and “Angels in America” by Tony Kushner. I enjoy reading good fiction (I recently finished Margaret Atwood’s “The Year of the Flood” which I highly recommend), trying new cuisines, and am excited to explore Philly this summer!
But enough about me - what is PlayPenn, and what does it do? PlayPenn is a non-profit organization which accepts submissions of scripts of new plays from all across the country. Paul Meshejian, the Artistic Director and Founder of PlayPenn described the selection process to me, and it sounds intense – from hundreds of scripts submitted, only six are ultimately chosen. The finalists are invited to the conference in July where they get to develop their plays with a director, a dramaturg and actors. The conference ends with a staged reading of each of the plays, and many of them go on to be produced!
If you go to the PlayPenn website: www.playpenn.org/index.html, you can read about the different plays which have been selected for this year’s conference. The plays encompass a host of intriguing, provocative, and moving characters and situations. A drug-addled prophet arrives amidst the wreckage of a New Orleans family. An obese man named Charlie finds solace in the clumsy, but heartfelt essays he corrects online for a living, while his life outside the computer screen disintegrates. There’s a world in which humans can no longer communicate through language. A marriage is tested by the challenge of raising a son with autism, an unexpected pregnancy happens, and a woman must question how well she really knows those she loves…
So there is a little introduction to me, and to what PlayPenn does! I will return soon to share some of my experiences during the first week…