Founding Artistic Director Mark Spina
CRANFORD, NJ — Once a month, The Theater Project brings in works in progress for audience members to review and provide feedback. The events are free and no registration is required.
The presentations are at the Cranford Community Center’s fully accessible 110-seat theater. Large print play programs and scripts are available upon advance request. The last presentation of the winter series is on Saturday, March 15, at 2 p.m.
The playwright workshop is hosted by founding Artistic Director Mark Spina, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Connecticut College and the Eugene O’Neill Center’s National Theatre Institute. Spina has extensive experience as a director and dramaturge in professional theaters throughout New York, New Jersey and New England – which was a natural segway to starting The Theater Project.
Spina says The Theater Project is an incubator for rising artists and new work. “We focus on plays that focus on current issues,” he said, and “connect with an issue of current concern.”
However, the writer’s group does not dictate what the subject matter should be. “It’s based on the potential of the writer, rather than the subject matter of their play,” said Spina. “We don’t have a focus for content. It fulfills our mission to develop new work. We present work in progress. Writers are looking for feedback and looking for audience reaction. They share comments with the playwright, so we can have a lively discussion.”
Spina said he tells their writers that the discussions are as much for the audience as they are for the writer. “The writers are going to feel when people are getting it, when people are laughing,” he said. “The discussion is to get all of us to have civil interaction. We’re looking to have an interesting discussion.”
But what the writer does with that interaction is ultimately up to the writer. “Every writer uses input differently,” Spina said.
Great suggestions from audience members happen frequently, according to Spina. “Audiences have terrific insight,” he said. “We have some very sensitive audiences. We’re seeing audiences becoming more sophisticated as time goes on.”
Prior to having their scripts read before a live audience, writers’ samples are given to senior writers to review. The feedback is then given to the writers. “If I get so much pushback, I say, ‘I don’t know if this group is good for you,’” said Spina. “We try to screen people who really don’t want feedback.”
Writers must have tough skins because, after they join the group, they get feedback over and over again before any play is presented to the public. “It’s a very vulnerable position,” said Spina. “We give feedback in a graduated way.”
But sometimes the audience just doesn’t get the play. Spina said, “We frequently get feedback: ‘This is too intellectual for me.’”
For the most part, in the workshop and presentation, the audience wants to be challenged, says Spina.
To learn more about The Theater Project, visit: https://www.thetheaterproject.org/.
Photo Courtesy of Mark Spina
