Dramatic Turn as Playwrights' Pietrowski Wins State Grant

The theater is alive and well in Madison, where John Pietrowski, the Artistic Director of , found himself at the center of a bit of real-life drama that is sure to benefit the performing arts in the Rose City.

Pietrowski, who currently resides in Long Valley, recently received an Individual Artist Fellowship Grant from the New Jersey Council of the Arts in the area of playwriting.

The fellowship grants are given out by the Arts Council, who, in conjunction with the Mid-Atlantic Arts Council, puts together a panel to judge works in the categories of crafts, sculpture, photography, playwriting and poetry. Pietrowski told Patch that the council judges works in different disciplines every year, and each set of categories is judged every third year. A peer panel review of each script is performed “blind,” meaning that nobody knows who submitted each work during the review process.

Pietrowski’s original work was awarded a perfect score by the peer review panel, which earned a $10,000 fellowship grant for the playwright, director and dramaturge.

“That’s what I got, much to my surprise,” said Pietrowski. “As far as I can tell, it is for the work that I’ve done and there are certain stipulations for what I can’t do with it. The intention is for me to be able to take some time to do more work, to do some writing. That’s what I intend to do.”

Pietrowski oversees the operations of Playwrights Theatre as the artistic director, and this additional credential has enhanced his ability and authority to oversee those operations, which includes working with well-known playwrights from all over the United States.

“While I’m a director and a dramaturge, I’ve always sort of felt a little sheepish when I’ve talked to my writers. It’s one thing to tell the person what to do, and it’s another one to be able to do it yourself. From that perspective, I feel like I can sit down with them as somebody who’s also working in the field,” said Pietrowski. “I have been for 20 years; ever since I graduated from college, I’ve been writing. It just hasn’t been something that I’ve been pushing because I’ve been working in the theater. To be able to sit down with the writers that I’ve been working with now, as a fellow writer, I feel that brings a lot more credibility to the process.”

In addition to his own credibility, this award also helps enhance that of the theater as a whole.

“Just from the overall perspective of Playwrights Theatre, to have the artistic head of the theater be the winner of a highly competitive, anonymous fellowship program, it looks good for us,” said Pietrowski. “Above and beyond what it does for me, for the theater, it’s a very good thing. It brings credibility, and you need that in the kind of work that we do.”

The son of a gas station and printing press owner and an employee of JC Penney, Pietrowski grew up in a working-class family in Hamilton Township. His interest in theater grew when he was in junior high school. His biology teacher, Joe Demynon, sparked his interest in theater by organizing weekend field trips to see Broadway and off-Broadway plays, as well as by having the back of his classroom full of books on varying subject matter, including theater arts.

“He actually cleared out the back of his classroom, the lab area, and he had a whole bunch of books back there, and he loved theater. We would just go there after school and sit back there, a bunch of us, and just read books and talk about stuff,” said Pietrowski. “I just became enamored with not just the theater itself, but the intellectual possibilities of being involved in the theater. You’re always learning something new. Every play you pick up is a whole world of understanding that you have to come to grips with, especially if you’re a director or something like that.”

During his teenage years, Pietrowski had the opportunity to learn more about the art of theater at Mercer County College under the direction of William Flynn.

“(Flynn) did very, very challenging work, far above and beyond what you’d expect to see at a community college. (He did) European plays; very difficult European plays,” said Pietrowski. “I was 14, 15 years old. He would let me do the props. Sometimes I would sit in rehearsals and do nothing but just watch, totally fascinated.”

That fascination continued into his college years at Northwestern University in Chicago, where Pietrowski became interested in playwriting after befriending  Keith Reddin, a well-known playwright who was just getting his start at the university.

“We became friends, and I would work on the plays that he had written. I became very fascinated with the process, because most of theater, if you’re not a writer, is an interpretive process of taking somebody else’s work and bringing your own stuff to it,” said Pietrowski. “At the same time, it’s not something created from scratch. I like that element of being able to create something from scratch.”

After placing first in the Agnes E. Nixon Playwriting Contest during his senior year at Northwestern, Pietrowski described himself as “hooked” on the craft.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I guess I can do this.’ I had no idea,” said Pietrowski.

Post-college life led Pietrowski back to New Jersey, where he became involved with the present-day at . After a few years, Pietrowski became one of the founding members of Playwrights Theatre.

Pietrowski would like to call attention to the fact that, for a while, fellowship grants similar to the won he received were discontinued by the New Jersey state government. Hopefully, he said, the grants are now here to stay.

“There was a time when these fellowships, because of economic conditions, were not happening. The Arts Council and the state legislature, in their wisdom, have allowed these to be back in the budget. I think that they’re very necessary for the cultural landscape of New Jersey,” said Pietrowski. “Writers who are working and working in New Jersey are getting these fellowships so they can write. We often times, in this state, fall under the shadow of either New York or Philadelphia, but when you really sort of look at it, there are a lot of very, very good writers and very, very good artists working in the state who kind of benefit the local life of people in the state who are in need of support and in need of people celebrating their work.”

“I’m glad that they’re back,” continued Pietrowski. “I’m glad I won one, and I’m glad that they’re back.”