(NETCONG, NJ) -- The Growing Stage: The Children’s Theatre of New Jersey has announced four the plays selected for their 11th Annual New Play-Reading Festival happening March 4-6, 2022. In the New Play-Reading Festival, four brand-new plays for young audiences, chosen from 150 submitted works, will be read by artists in person at the Historic Palace Theatre. The four plays selected for the festival are: Fit In by Glenn Weyler, Discovering June by Karen Ruetz, The Sanctuary by Ann Eskridge and Maddie and Eleanor by Martha King De Silva.
Following each reading, the entire family can participate in a discussion of the work with the professional team including the playwrights. One of the four plays will be selected to become a fully mounted Main Stage production in 2023!
Fit In by Glenn Weyler (North Carolina) - Friday, March 4th at 7:30pm | Directed by: Sean Quigley. A young Affrilachian girl has a secret--she and her family are giants hiding in plain sight. Now that she has reached high school age, she must leave home school and forcibly reduce herself to fit in with the other students. At the school, she meets another girl like herself--but this one is a runaway with a lot of dangerous ideas. Can she, and her family, keep their own secret safe and help a lost soul as well?
Discovering June by Karen Ruetzl (Georgia) - Saturday, March 5th at 4:00pm | Directed by Lauren Moran Mills. Jenna's secret desire is to be an artist like her deceased mother, however she is full of self-doubt. Her father, who just remarried, brings Jenna to stay with her grandmother, a woman she hasn't seen in 12 years, while he and his wife go on their honeymoon. Jenna begins a journey of self-discovery as well as a discovery about her mother, June, though her grandmother and the creatures who live on the island.
The Sanctuary by Ann Eskridge (Michigan) - Saturday, March 5th at 7:00pm | Directed by Sahirah Johnson. The Sanctuary, a play about a young boy who has lost his father, befriends a neighborhood eccentric by helping her make her shrine out of junk that honors people who have died. Over the years, this shrine becomes an eyesore to the neighborhood, and they want to tear it down. When Little Man hears this, he tries to warn Lucy Johnson that the shrine is in danger. But by the time he gets to her house, the shrine has been demolished and she is gone. What is left are pictures he will cherish and the wisdom that she instilled in him.
Maddie and Eleanor by Martha King De Silva (Washington DC) - Sunday, March 6th at 2:00pm | Directed by Casey Esbin. When Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert decide to take in foster child Anne instead of the boy they requested, it's with the hope that they can do her some good. As Anne comes of age, her curiosity, imagination, and capacity for love teaches all three of them what it means to create family and the importance of commitment to it. Adapted freely and timelessly from the classic by L.M. Montgomery.
Admission is a suggested donation of $5 per reading. The Growing Stage: The Children’s Theatre of New Jersey is located in the Historic Palace Theatre on Route 183 in Netcong, New Jersey.
The Growing Stage’s programs are made possible, in part, by funding from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and contributions from numerous corporations, foundations, and individuals.
