Centenary Stage Company to Offer Playwrighting Course

The Centenary Stage Company will offer a special Playwrighting Class this winter, which will be open to the public. The class will be taught by Playwrights Theatre of NJ Executive Director, John Pietrowski, and will be held on Tuesdays from 6-9 PM, from Jan. 20th through May 5. The cost of the class will be $250.

Intended for both beginning and experienced writers, this class will explore, through hands-on exercises, the elements essential to creating a vital play for the stage. Experienced writers with plays-in-progress will have ample opportunity to workshop their pieces; beginning writers will work towards the creation of a 10-20 page play. Instructional emphasis will be placed on the creation of interesting characters and events, and how they are rendered efficiently and effectively through both the textual and non-textual language of the theatre.

Playwrights will have the opportunity, if interested, to showcase their work during the annual CSC Playwrights Series festival in April. The festival is now in its 23rd year, bringing playwrights from all over the country to Hackettstown each spring to workshop and present their new work with a professional director and cast.

Director, playwright and actor John Pietrowski has been the Artistic Director of the Playwrights Theater of NJ (PTNJ) , a professional theatre and arts education institution dedicated to developing and nurturing the dramatic imagination of artists, students, and audiences, for over 20 years. He has taught playwrighting at Kean University and Bloomfield College, and has led countless workshops and outreach missions to advance the art of playwrighting throughout the state. Pietrowski has also directed over 25 new plays and countless readings during his tenure. His two plays Black Madonna and The Buda have been performed at Playwrights Theatre, Foundation Theatre, Loaves and Fish Theatre and Arts Club Theatre, and his most recent play, Dura Mater, was workshopped at Johns Hopkins in the fall of 2010.

Pietrowski is the recipient of a 2012 New Jersey State Council on the Arts Playwriting Fellowship. He currently teaches Theatre History at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and he holds an undergraduate degree in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and a Masters in Public Administration in nonprofit management from Seton Hall University. Mr. Pietrowski was also the Program Coordinator of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Theatre Program for Teachers and Playwrights from 1988-94. He is currently the Secretary of the New Jersey Theatre Alliance, Treasurer of the Madison Arts and Culture Alliance and the Treasurer of the National New Play Network.

Interested writers should contact Catherine Rust (program director, Playwright Series) at 908 979 0900 x5, to register. A special early registration discount of $25 will be offered for all registrations received by December 30.

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