July 5, 2007 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Hill theater vet developing new plays with ‘PlayPenn’
by CLARK GROOME

Paul Meshejian is “looking for work that shows not only evidence of craft but evidence of artistry.”

Paul Meshejian has been a member of the Philadelphia theater community since he joined the resident company at People’s Light and Theatre in 1989. The Overbrook native, who has recently become a resident of Chestnut Hill, has acted and directed in many of the area’s best theaters.

During his time here he became aware that “as much production as we have in our community, and it’s a prolific community, we had no organization devoted to new work. Everybody produces new plays, but nobody was spending time developing new work.” His solution was to create PlayPenn, an annual conference whose purpose is “the development of new plays, the advancement of new voices in the theater both locally and nationally, and the cross-fertilization of writers, directors, dramaturges and actors.” In its third year, it has already made it mark.

Meshejian, 58, saw his first play, the Broadway production of Oliver, when he was 11. He really loved it. It wasn’t until he was at Parsons College in Iowa in the 1970s that he became more involved with what has turned out to be his life’s work. He was working at a summer theater there, hanging lights and painting sets as an intern, when the festival director told him he could be paid for what he was doing. Liking that, he got even more involved and eventually began directing and acting.

“When I got out of college,” he said in a recent interview, “I applied for a job to run a community theater in another Iowa town. I bullshitted my way into the job. I got it. I directed a musical and a couple of plays.” He went to New York and then “bounced around for a while,” managing community theaters in Iowa and Michigan. Married in 1978, he and his wife, a sociologist, talked about where they might go where she could teach and he could freelance as a director. They settled on Minneapolis/St. Paul, which was a theatrical hot bed in the late ‘70s.

Wife Michal taught at Macalester College, and Paul “started taking acting jobs to support my directing habit. I started making a living.” During this time he often came back to Philadelphia to visit family. While here he got connected with People’s Light in Malvern. One thing led to another, and he accepted an offer in 1989 to become a member of its resident company. There was a lot of back and forth to the Twin Cities until his wife retired in 2000 and moved east.

While at People’s Light, “I let it be known that I wanted to direct plays there. That’s happened a little there, some one-acts.” He has also directed at InterAct, at 1812 and at Hedgerow.

During this period he never lost interest in nurturing new work, something he was exposed to at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis. In the early ‘80s he was the founding artistic director of Stage One: Collaboration, a Minneapolis/St. Paul professional theater devoted to new and rarely produced works.

About five years ago he began formulating plans for what became PlayPenn. “I went around and talked to all the artistic directors in town and [asked them] what they would think of such an organization. They were all enthusiastic. Then someone asked what it would cost. I just pulled some number out of [thin air] and said ‘$40,000.’ The person said ‘I’ll give you half for three years.’”

He has raised the rest of the money necessary. The budget in that first year, 2005, was $50,000; last year was $75,000; and this year is $94,000. That covers space rental, travel, housing, artists’ fees, script copying and so forth.

When he started his program, he contacted all the theater people he knew at the various regional theaters around the country and asked them to nominate as many as five playwrights for consideration as participants in the program. He then got scripts, which were read by a select group of local theater folk, and then, in those first two years, four were chosen for the conference.

This year the conference, which runs from July 9 to July 22, will feature six plays, selected from150 submitted for consideration. The chosen playwrights will bring their works-in-progress to Philadelphia for “two weeks of intensive work with a professional director of their choice, dramaturgical assistance and professional actors from the Philadelphia theater community. Playwrights will rehearse for 29 hours with a team of artists devoted to the progress of their work, culminating in public-staged readings between July 19 and July 22.”

PlayPenn has already had an impact, both nationally and internationally. Meshejian says, “I am looking for work that shows not only evidence of craft but evidence of artistry. If my judgment is that this is a play that will engage and intrigue audiences and that theaters will produce, that’s what I invite.” Apparently that is working.

“One play [from the 2005 symposium], The Overwhelming by J. T. Rogers, went right to the National Theatre of Great Britain from our conference. It had a sold-out run, toured Great Britain and is going to open the Roundabout Theatre’s season in New York in the fall.

“We had a play that year by Jordan Harrison called Act a Lady that had its world premiere at the [Actor’s Theatre of Louisville’s] Humana Festival. We had another play by Sheila Callaghan that got produced at a number of small theaters around the country.”

Meshejian, who spends many hours every day working on PlayPenn, have just moved to Chestnut Hill. He and his wife bought a farm in Birchrunville, Chester County, after she retired from teaching in 2000. Recently they decided to move closer to center city. When he started PlayPenn and it became a reasonably successful venture, he was also teaching at the University of the Arts and Arcadia University, and the commute from the far reaches of Chester County was getting to be too much. “It took 30 minutes to drive to the train,” he said.

“I grew up in Overbrook, but I never ever went to Chestnut Hill. I’d only ever heard about it.” A woman whom he wanted to hire as a development person lived in Chestnut Hill, and after visiting her he said to his wife, “I think you will like this.” Subsequently, they drove up here, “and my wife fell in love with it. Two days later we had an apartment.”

In addition to the two-week symposia each summer, he hopes to stage readings and workshops throughout the year to help local playwrights hear their work. His sole purpose is to serve the playwright and the play. He firmly believes, and it’s impossible to argue, that the nurturing of new work and new artists is vital to the future of the art form. “PlayPenn,” Meshejian said, “is raising the flag of ‘the new’ in the interest of embracing, engaging and challenging audiences we believe wait, with hunger, for what the next generations of writers have to offer.”

For more information about PlayPenn visit www.playpenn.org.