In October 2003, Gary Wien launched Upstage Magazine, a monthly print publication that covered the arts throughout Central New Jersey. The publication ultimately grew to 25,000 copies per month with distribution throughout much of the state. Upstage was well received critically and ultimately earned an Asbury Music Award for Top Music Publication in 2007, becoming the first publication other than The Aquarian to ever win the award. In addition, both the website and Wien picked up multiple Asbury Music Awards (for Top Website and Top Music Journalist) as well. Wien left the publication shortly afterwards, and Upstage ceased publishing a few months later.
In the months that followed, arts groups continued to submit press releases and materials. In 2008, Wien launched NewJerseyStage.com as a hobby to be an online news resource to continue coverage of the arts. Six years later, he decided to return to covering the arts full-time and redesigned the website to become a digital version of the old Upstage Magazine. On May 1, 2014, New Jersey Stage became a full-time resource covering the arts. On July 15, the first issue of New Jersey Stage digital magazine was released.
One year after New Jersey Stage Magazine was launched, Gary Wien was diagnosed with secondary progressive Multiple Sclerosis. He uses the website and magazine as a way of fighting the disease each day. Over 35,000 articles have been posted since New Jersey Stage became official and 75 issues of the magazine were published until the pandemic of 2020 forced it to go on hiatus. Over 550,000 unique visitors come to the website each year.
The website is primary run by Wien, but it benefits from the work of writers like Danny Coleman, Bob Makin, Eric Hillis, Karen Nowosad, Al Nigrin, and Spotlight Central. All of the writers on the site are volunteers - a group who love the arts. New Jersey Stage aims to bring artists, organizations, and art councils together. In addition to regularly publishing original feature articles, interviews, and columns, we encourage organizations to send us press releases. New Jersey Stage considers itself the Garden State's Arts Newswire and home of original arts journalism.
You can follow New Jersey Stage on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, BlueSky and via our RSS feed
Mailing Address:
NewJerseyStage.com
P.O. Box 811
Belmar, NJ 07719
Email: [email protected]
From the Tony Award-winning producers of Hadestown comes A Beat of Our Own — a brand-new musical comedy that pulls you straight into the pulsating rhythms, kaleidoscopic colors and raw energy of competitive bhangra dance.
Don’t miss the driving music force that rocked Broadway and millions of fans in the ground-breaking musical “Rock of Ages!” This band of rock star musicians and lead singers from the original cast of the five-time Tony Award nominated show electrified Broadway audiences for over seven years, and now they’re coming to UCPAC’s Main Stage.
Make unforgettable memories with your little ones at Elmo’s Got the Moves—the all-new Sesame Street Live show coming to your neighborhood!
Following sold out performances and rave reviews across the country, The Golden Girls are back and better than ever with a stage show that’s more exciting than a trip to the Rusty Anchor. Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue is returning on a US Fall Tour in 2026!
Following sold out performances and rave reviews across the country, The Golden Girls are back and better than ever with a stage show that’s more exciting than a trip to the Rusty Anchor. Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue is returning on a US Fall Tour in 2026!
Keitaro Harada conductor
New Jersey Symphony
Get ready for an unforgettable night of music, comedy, and crowd-powered fun as DUELING PIANOS takes over The Carteret!
Sparks fly when fire and water meet in Disney and Pixar’s “Elemental!” In a dazzling city where fire, water, earth, and air residents live side by side, fiery Ember and easygoing Wade discover that their differences might just be their greatest strength, and that opposites really do attract.
Barb desperately needs friends. That’s why she moved to this 55+ community in the first place. So what better way to meet new people than to join a good old fashioned Bingo Night? When Bingo Night turns into a full-blown orgy, Barb must decide: does she stay in her safe, predictable world? Or does she play a new game of chance and truly live before it’s too late?
References to Salvador Dalí Make Me Hot is an Obie Award-winning surrealist play by José Rivera that follows Gabriela, a lonely housewife in Barstow, California, awaiting her soldier-husband Benito’s return from the Gulf War in 1991. In the poetic fantasy world she creates as she drifts through her days in the Mojave desert, her housecat and a local coyote strike up a romance, while the celestial man-in-the-moon and her very real teenage neighbor Martín vie for her affection.
