Mr. Stephens’ play goes to Washington
By Casey Gillis on Aug. 30, 2007
An original play scripted by a Randolph College theater professor is going to be part of the Kennedy Center’s Labor Day celebration this weekend.
Tom Stephens’ “Paddy’s Pot,” a play about three generations of Irish women in 1933 Buffalo, N.Y., will be read at the Page to Stage Festival. The festival is the Kennedy Center’s three-day event featuring free readings, open rehearsals and panel discussions with more than 40 theaters in the D.C. area.
“It has a strong sense of family, tradition, faith,” Stephens said of the play.
The playwright said he was inspired to write it after a 2005 visit to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. During his time there, Stephens went to see “Trad,” a play about three old men.
“It was just as charming and as moving as it could possibly be,” he said. “It had the kind of humor that you expect of the Irish, and it had the kind of sentiment that only the Irish could get away with.”
After seeing it, Stephens wanted to write something similar with all female characters. He spent the following summer writing “Paddy’s Pot.”
During the writing process, he regularly shared his work with members of the Playwright’s Forum, a D.C.-based writer’s group he’s been involved with for more than 12 years, to get feedback and suggestions.
Once it was finished, the Forum hosted an in-house reading of “Paddy’s.” Stephens directed a production of it at Randolph College in January.
At the beginning of this summer, Stephens got a call from Ernie Joselovitz, the founder of the Forum, who wanted to submit “Paddy’s” — which was also a finalist for the 2007 National Playwright Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn. — to the Page to Stage Festival.
“It happens to be particularly effective as a reading, no less so than it would be as a full production,” Joselovitz said through e-mail.
“… It’s funny not in addition to but because of the serious underpinning of the family situation (depicted in the play),” Joselovitz said. “And as a family drama, it touches upon everyone’s emotional life with an easy and immediate visceral response.”
“Paddy’s Pot” is actually the second of Stephens’ plays to receive attention up north.
“Sing Me Eddy,” which was first staged at Randolph College, was presented in Maryland by Cedar Lane Stage as part of its festival of one-act plays during the first two weeks of August.
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