Local Playwrights Present One-Acts at Fair Lawn Festival

For Craig Tiede, Friday night’s Old Library Theatre presentation of his play “Affectations” at the will be the first time he’s seen one of his works performed before a live audience.

Tiede’s play is one of five original one-act works penned by local writers that will be performed this weekend as part of Old Library Theatre’s first-ever 4x4+1 festival.

Modeled on other original one-act festivals in the area, 4x4+1 was the brainchild of Old Library Theatre producer/director Linda Wielkotz.

Wielkotz’ motivation was two-fold – to diversify the theatre’s offerings beyond just musicals and to provide an outlet for emerging creative writing talent.

“We have our actors, our directors, our technicians in community theater,” Wielkotz said, “but we don’t have a place for people who want to write. And you’re getting a lot more people that write that can’t get their pieces produced…This gives them the opportunity to be part of the community theater world also.”

Tiede’s submission was one of about 30 one-acts that Wielkotz and a committee of three others received and reviewed for the festival. The committee whittled the entries down to five deserving finalists whose plays will be performed in succession this weekend.

Tiede, a Jersey City-based screenwriter who has both directed and acted in Old Library Theatre productions, said he was grateful for the opportunity to have his own work produced.

“Though there are opportunities around here for writers and performers to do unique, interesting things like submit to festivals or writing competitions,” he said, “there aren’t a whole lot of opportunities to have your work actually produced and presented unless you end up being the winner of those particular situations -- which is a lot harder, obviously, here in the New York City area. “

The other four plays selected were “Vacation Photos,” by Tom Winkler; “Feeding the Pigeons,” by Joe DelPriore; “In the Bus Depot,” by Robert Daria; and “Last Dance,” by Omar Kozarsky.

Of the five pieces, Tiede’s “Affectations,” is the hardest hitting, Wielkotz said. The others are comedies or dramedies.

“Craig’s was the drama,” Wielkotz said. “He loves edgier kinds of things that are a challenge…Pieces that the average person doesn’t do. That hit on certain issues or current events.”

“Affectations,” takes place in a hospital psych ward the night a young actor returns home to find his gay roommate has attempted suicide. Seeking support and an explanation, he contacts the roommates’ estranged parents who join him at the hospital.

In writing the play, Tieide said he drew inspiration from people in his own life and stories that he’d heard told, and then reorganized them.

“I think what writers really do well, when we do it well, is pay attention to all the information around us and take all the different puzzle pieces and put them together so that it tells a different story,” he said. “None of the things that happened in this play have happened to me, but I know people like these people and I was just interested in putting them together and seeing what might happen if these three types of people came together in this fairly emergent, emotional circumstance and had to navigate around each other to figure out how best to move forward.”

In addition to the unique depth of Tiede’s play, it’s also the only performance that is being directed by its writer. The other four writers were given the opportunity to direct their works, but passed on the chance.

“Directing my own piece is hard,” Tiede said. “I love directing and I love acting and I love writing, but putting them all together is somewhat strange. I’ve never had that experience before.”

He said that at times during rehearsals, actors have asked him questions about a particular piece of dialogue or pacing that have left him a bit at odds trying to understand what he was getting at himself.

“As a director I may have a very clear vision of it,” Tiede said, “but then I realize that I wrote this as well and I don’t always have as clear an idea where things came from from the writer side of me or have the answers from that perspective."

Divorcing himself from the writing process has been necessary to direct the play successfully.

“It’s been really important to look at this as a text that I was given by somebody else, and make use of what’s there just like I would if I were an actor and this was what was handed to me and I didn’t know anything else about it,” he said. “To dive into it from the perspective of the person who wrote it would have, I think, mired me in a mess and not helped [the cast] to see things clearly. “

Tiede’s still not sure what it’s going to feel like when his work is performed, but he's anxious to find out.

“I’ve had the experience of directing things and seeing audience reactions to that, and that in and of itself is awkward," he said. "But I think there’s a degree of self-involvement here because it all began with me that might make that an even more strange experience than before.”

“Affectations,” and the other four one-act pieces in the 4x4+1 festival open Friday night at 8 p.m. The one-acts will also be performed Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10 at the door.