In Search Of New Playwrights' Theatre's Old Scripts
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/25/AR2009082502754.html
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"Harry M. Bagdasian hopes memories are long and attics full among theater folk in Washington and beyond. He's on the hunt for scripts of plays that premiered in the 1970s and '80s at the long-defunct New Playwrights' Theatre in Washington, which, as a determined 23-year-old, he co-founded.
He remembers thinking, " 'Wow. No one's doing new plays in Washington, the capital of our country. Why don't we have a theater here working with American playwrights?' We only had about two cents, but we started anyway."
New Playwrights' presented new work on a shoestring from 1972 to 1988, for most of that time in what is now the Church Street Theater. Bagdasian left the company in 1984 "kind of burned out," he says. On his Web site (http://www.hbagdasian.com) he writes, "I left NPT in the incapable hands of a Board of Trustees that eventually let the place go bankrupt."
Some of the scripts he's seeking are: "And They Dance Real Slow in Jackson" by James Leonard Jr.; "Rats," a musical spoof of "Cats," by Tim Grundmann; "Canticle" by Michael Champagne and William Penn, based on Dante's "Inferno"; and a 45-minute musical "Hamlet!," which featured a very young J. Fred Shiffman, now a busy Washington actor.
Perusal of Bagdasian's Web site shows youthful shots of such soon-to-be Washington theater luminaries as Molly Smith, artistic director of Arena Stage, and Fred Strother, another busy actor. Stage and film actress Marcia Gay Harden worked there, as did Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson, and James C. Nicola, artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop. (Lloyd Rose, who was chief drama critic at The Washington Post, was New Playwrights' dramaturge.) A play by Washington-based writer Ernest Joselovitz, "Hagar's Children," was picked up by the Public Theater's Joe Papp and produced off-Broadway in 1977.
Aside from nostalgia, Bagdasian has other reasons to create a formal archive of his New Playwrights' treasures. "Being the eternal optimist, I would like to see some of this material rediscovered and revisited by this new generation of producers and artistic directors, because there's a lot of fun material. There's a lot of engaging drama that did not get published and is worth rediscovery," he says."
He remembers thinking, " 'Wow. No one's doing new plays in Washington, the capital of our country. Why don't we have a theater here working with American playwrights?' We only had about two cents, but we started anyway."
New Playwrights' presented new work on a shoestring from 1972 to 1988, for most of that time in what is now the Church Street Theater. Bagdasian left the company in 1984 "kind of burned out," he says. On his Web site (http://www.hbagdasian.com) he writes, "I left NPT in the incapable hands of a Board of Trustees that eventually let the place go bankrupt."
Some of the scripts he's seeking are: "And They Dance Real Slow in Jackson" by James Leonard Jr.; "Rats," a musical spoof of "Cats," by Tim Grundmann; "Canticle" by Michael Champagne and William Penn, based on Dante's "Inferno"; and a 45-minute musical "Hamlet!," which featured a very young J. Fred Shiffman, now a busy Washington actor.
Perusal of Bagdasian's Web site shows youthful shots of such soon-to-be Washington theater luminaries as Molly Smith, artistic director of Arena Stage, and Fred Strother, another busy actor. Stage and film actress Marcia Gay Harden worked there, as did Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson, and James C. Nicola, artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop. (Lloyd Rose, who was chief drama critic at The Washington Post, was New Playwrights' dramaturge.) A play by Washington-based writer Ernest Joselovitz, "Hagar's Children," was picked up by the Public Theater's Joe Papp and produced off-Broadway in 1977.
Aside from nostalgia, Bagdasian has other reasons to create a formal archive of his New Playwrights' treasures. "Being the eternal optimist, I would like to see some of this material rediscovered and revisited by this new generation of producers and artistic directors, because there's a lot of fun material. There's a lot of engaging drama that did not get published and is worth rediscovery," he says."
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