Paul Meshejian is artistic director of PlayPenn, a new-play
development organization that is seeing all six of its projects get
full-fledged productions.
Posted on Thu, Jan. 29, 2009
At PlayPenn, hard work of making theater
By Wendy Rosenfield The Rant
For The Inquirer
Paul Meshejian doesn’t care for "a bourgeois middle-class theater."
He’s not interested in "another production of a Shakespeare play." And
he doesn’t think "people who spend the kind of money it takes to get
into the door of the theater want to see what they see on television,
or what they already know."
So when he decided four years ago to create PlayPenn – a new-play
development organization that would help birth the kind of work he did
want to see – he believed theatergoers would be interested too.
This season, Meshejian is one proud papa. Despite an economic climate
that saw many houses jettison new work in favor of more familiar
projects, all six plays developed at PlayPenn’s two-week-long 2007
conference are scheduled to receive full-fledged productions at
theaters around the country.
In fact, three of them are premiering or have already opened this
month on local stages – Aaron Posner’s My Name Is Asher Lev is running
at the Arden, Andrew Case’s opened last night at InterAct, and Russell
Davis’ The Day of the Picnic premieres tomorrow at People’s Light and
Theatre Company in Malvern.
Meshejian, 59, grew up in Philadelphia’s Overbrook section. A director
and actor, he has been a People’s Light company member for two
decades. But it was the years he spent in the Twin Cities in the ’80s
that woke him up to the positive impact a supportive theater-producing
community can have on the national theater scene, and on a city’s
reputation as a theater hub.
Minneapolis’ Playwrights’ Center, which launched the careers of such
playwrights as Steven Dietz, Lee Blessing and Jeffrey Hatcher, started
out in 1971 "as just a place to get together," he says, "but blossomed
into something more substantial. All the actors and directors in town
were involved."
Meshejian says that as he began to pull back from his Philadelphia
acting career and "settle into middle age," he wondered how he might
"leave something lasting with the profession that’s been fairly good
to me."
Led by his passion for challenging new work and a desire to unite
local theater artists, he held discussions with area artistic
directors and colleagues from around the country. The result, in 2005,
was the birth of the PlayPenn program. As its artistic director,
Meshejian wanted to fix some of the flaws he saw in the workshopping
process, in which scripts are written and rewritten, and playwrights
are "blind-dated" with a cast and director for a final public
reading. (He heard repeatedly that "there’s nothing worse than showing
up at one of these things and having the play cast improperly, nothing
worse than having the wrong actor in the lead role.")
To head off bad matches, Meshejian says, "When I make an offer to a
playwright, I ask, ‘Is there a director you’re working with, or
someone you’d like to work with?’ " If there is, PlayPenn covers all
travel, housing, food and incidental expenses for the duration of
their Philadelphia stay, and they receive an additional fee for their
work.
"We try to make sure that not only does it not cost artists to do
their work here," he says, "but that they might actually go away with
something in their pockets."
If the playwright doesn’t have a director in mind, Meshejian makes
recommendations from the local talent pool, and the playwright then
casts his or her reading with area actors.
Posner, whose play was commissioned by the Arden, planned to direct
Asher Lev himself, but teamed up with director Danny Goldstein and
dramaturge (an artistic consultant and researcher) Michele Volansky to
fine-tune the piece at PlayPenn. The result? Volansky remained as the
play’s dramaturge, and Goldstein is now directing a production at Two
River Theater Company, Red Bank, N.J., where Posner is artistic
director.
Posner is more than pleased with the outcome. "For all the bashing
that has happened in the American theater at various times about the
workshopping process, I would call this a textbook-perfect example of
the way it’s supposed to work." But even under the best
circumstances, these are difficult times for playwrights premiering
work. Christina Ham, a Minneapolis playwright whose drama After Adam
was one of the six PlayPenn works picked up by a professional theater
this season, saw Luna Stage in Montclair, N.J., postpone her show’s
opening for budgetary reasons.
But she is stoic about the play’s prospects, saying, "Ultimately it’s
going to be done when it’s supposed to be." And though she says "the
climate for new plays has always been precarious," she’s unequivocal
about her experience in Philadelphia, which led her to make
significant changes to her script.
"Everyone’s looking for that magic elixir as to how a new play can
become a produced play," she says, but at PlayPenn "so much time and
care is given to make sure there is the right chemistry on each of the
play’s teams, which makes me realize they take the process seriously."
Seth Rozin, InterAct Theatre Company’s artistic director, has long
supported new work, both at his own theater and as a member of the
National New Play Network, which fosters premieres at theaters all
over the United States. So it’s not surprising that he’s also involved
in PlayPenn’s selection process, helping to choose scripts and cast
readings. (As a result of the conference’s growing reputation,
submissions have risen from 90 in 2005 to 350.)
He and Meshejian, among others, also are working on raising the city’s
profile as a place that not only introduces new writers, but also
nurtures them. The Philadelphia New Play Initiative, still in its
nascent stages, seeks to match playwrights with area producers.
Rozin explains, "Philly is well-known as a pretty hopping theater
town, and playwrights and companies are setting up shop
here. . . . But my worry is that if opportunities don’t grow for these
people, they might leave."
He also stresses that "in a world that always seems to be getting a
little more conservative, with everyone moving towards safer, surer
plays, I feel someone needs to be keeping the stream of new ideas
alive."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
