Old Fund Raiser

New Play Development at The Actors Studio of Newburyport

Stage Three is a theater-lab experience designed to promote the development of new plays. A workshop production is full-scale, but not a premier. In our program the selected plays have preliminarily been presented at the Writers & Actors, Ink forum, and then as staged readings at TASN through our association with the North Shore Readers Theater Collaborative. The production will run for nine performances and is open to the public.

Our 2013 selection is Danny Sklar's, Hack License; the story of Maryanne Hobson, a twenty two year old New York City cab driver. Maryanne, is a cheerful and enthusiastic twenty-two year old with dreams and expectations for her life. She can bring peace to a bad situation with her elegant wisdom, honesty, and quirky listening skills. People find themselves making significant life choices in her taxicab while she, herself, waits for 'the man' to hail her cab whom she will know as her true love.

Danny teaches creative writing at Endicott College in nearby Beverly, Massachusetts and is a published writer of plays, poems, and short stories. He has had plays produced at La Ma Ma Experimental Theater Club in New York City, Playwright's Platform and The Boston Theater Marathon at the Calderwood Pavilion in Boston Massachusetts, and at The Firehouse Center for The Arts in Newburyport.

In a Stage Three workshop production, the playwright works with the director and cast refining and trimming the play, and with the set and lighting design team.  Design choices often become integral to shaping a new play. The purpose of a workshop production is to get the play on its feet in a physical setting to see what works and what doesn't, and to observe the audience response.

This type of production is a critical step in the play development process. Short of being a premier, the play remains eligible for festivals and contests, which are major resources for introducing new work to the mainstream theater community.

According to award-winning playwright, Marsha Norman, playwrights and actors are too far away from each other in the play development process. She says, ' ... if we want to do one single thing to improve the theatrical climate in America, we'd assign one playwright to every theater.' At TASN we have done that and more! Our collaborations with W&A, Ink; NSRTC linked with our Stage Three Workshop productions address this need in the North Shore region, offering playwrights access to these vital steps. Our combined programs allow our audience to be directly involved in the play development process from the earliest stages right through the Stage Three performances.