Young Playwrights to Take Spotlight at Festival

When the actors rehearsing this week at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey have a question for the author, they will turn to the youngest person in the room.

The professional actors are putting together plays written by 16 local students that will be presented Saturday afternoon in the 24^th annual Madison Young Playwrights Festival.

Grace Van Cleef, 11, had a play in the festival last year and another one this year. Describing her role at the rehearsal last year, the Madison Junior School sixth-grader said, "I told them how I wanted things said or done."

The plays selected for the festival were written by students who took a free after-school class in playwriting at four local elementary schools and Madison Junior School last fall.

At the end of the class, the students read their plays to a group of their parents.

The students whose plays were selected for the festival attended an editing class in January at Playwrights Theatre, where they received suggestions on how to cut or rework their plays for performance.

Van Cleef said she had to reduce the 17 characters originally in her play last year to seven. That play, a fantasy about talking cats, was chosen to represent New Jersey in a national young playwrights competition but it didn't win, she said.

Her play this year, "A Newsboy, a Time Machine and Mystery," is about a girl who invents a time machine that is stolen by the evil father of a budding journalist who interviews the girl about her discovery.

Kathy Notine said the first time she read the play written by her daughter Kelly, 9, a fourth-grader at Kings Road School, was when she typed it for her near the end of the fall class.

Kelly's play, "Violet's Life Adventure," is about a mother who gives up her child at birth and the child's efforts to find her biological mother when she's older.

"It's a very simple look" at the issue, her mother said, adding, "I thought it was cute and fun. Her sense of humor came through."

Julie Cefalu said she had not heard the play written by her son Rob Bazaral, 9, a fourth-grader at Torey J. Sabatini School, until the readings for the parents. "I was very surprised at how creative it was."

Rob's play, "The Lollipopman," is about two different worlds, the broccoli world and the candy world, and a boy who turns into a super hero, the Lollipopman, who must battle his enemy, who takes the form of the green vegetable.

Rob said he cut the play from 18 pages to 14 after the editing class.

Caroline Abruzzo, 12, a sixth-grader at Madison Junior School, is participating in the festival for the second year in a row.

Her play, "The Teacher's Pet," tells a new story about the same characters who appeared in her play last year.

"I feel like I have a connection with the main character," she said.

Having her plays chosen for the festival is "really cool" because "you get to see what your play is like to other people," she added.

Caroline's mother, Tricia, said her playwriting skills developed quite a bit by taking the class in fifth and sixth grades. The first year, "she was looking for a lot of re-enforcement from me," while the second year, "I never even saw" her play. "She came to her own conclusions."

The Young Playwrights Festival will be presented in two sessions, starting at 1 and 3 p.m. Saturday at Playwrights Theatre.

Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students to attend one session and $15 for adults, $7.50 for students to see both. For information, call (973) 514-1787 ext. 34 or go online to www.ptnj.org.

On Thursday and Friday, plays written by three students each at Torey J. Sabatini, Central Avenue, St. Vincent Martyr and Kings Road schools will be performed for their classmates at those schools. A performance of plays by four students at Madison Junior School will be scheduled in April.