CRANFORD, NJ — The Theater Project’s Playwrights’ Workshop recently launched its winter/spring series of New Play Readings. The readings are at Cranford Community Center’s 110-seat theater. The script-in-hand staged readings are free to the public and include post-performance conversations with audience, author, cast and director – allowing audience members to give their opinions, which helps contribute to development of the script.
The first play of the new year is “Conshohocken McFaddens,” by Lynn Aylward. It’s the story of Anna and George McFadden, who meet and marry in 1919 in a small mill town outside Philadelphia. They are dreaming that the worst is behind them as the country emerges from the devastation of the “war to end all wars” and the history’s deadliest epidemic. But they are in for a few surprises.
Aylward is an emerging playwright who recently moved from San Francisco via Scotland to New Jersey. She was a long-time member of the Writers Pool in San Francisco. Her short plays have been produced in California, Florida and New York.
The roles of Anna and George McFadden were played by Tatiana Grey and Dalton Gorden, who are members of Actors’ Equity Association. Other cast members were Derek Crosby, Brandon Luckenbaugh, Lee DeCecco and Mikey Miller. The play was directed by Gary Glor.
Aylward said her plays are based on stories her 98-year-old dad tells her. “It’s not all sweetness and light,” she said.
“Conshohocken McFaddens” was writing during the COVID-19 pandemic, which Aylward said she saw parallels with the 1918 influenza pandemic, aka Spanish flu.
The first half of the play was presented to the audience, followed by a short intermission and then a discussion.
Aylward was concerned that the play may be “too cutesy” and that “people weren’t naturalistic enough.”
Audience members, however, commented that the family did indeed come across as a genuine family; that the characters were very believable.
Glor said, “They are not ‘The Waltons,’ which is good. At the core, they’re trying to do the best thing they can for the family. I don’t want them to turn satanic.”
At the end of the workshop, Glor complimented the cast. He said, “The cast came in as strangers. By the end of rehearsal, they were all working together as a team.”
Friends of the Cranford Library hosts the series on the third Saturday of each month, January through May and September through November. It is made possible in part through a Union County Local Arts Grant. All presentations take place at the Cranford Community Center, located at 220 Walnut Ave.
Mark Spina is the artistic director of The Theater Project.
For more information, visit: www.theTheaterProject.org.
Photos by Maryanne Christiano-Mistretta
