Stuart Brown, President of the Connecticut Critics Circle, has a dual life on the other side of the footlights. The West Hartford resident is also an award-winning playwright whose works have been staged across the country. This month, Brown will be represented at four different playwrighting events. “It’s going to be a very exciting September,” he said. “Both my one-act works and 10-minute plays will be showcased throughout the state.”
On Friday, September 5 , at 7pm, his play, Lady Jigsaw, will lead off the Chestnut Street Playhouse Theatre’s 5th Annual Playwrighting Festival. The event runs from Friday, September 5, through Sunday, September 7, in Norwich. “I think audiences will enjoy the show,” the former UConn-Waterbury administrator said. “It takes place in a senior retirement complex, where two senior adults must overcome their individual grief, loneliness, and an irascible competitor, as they prepare for the annual jigsaw puzzle tournament.”
Brown, who has led the state’s theater critics group for the past seven years, will be represented in two different 10-minute play festivals the second week of September. “A theater group in New Jersey, just over the bridge from Philadelphia, will be staging three of my plays on Thursday, September 11,” he said. “Up in Connecticut, the Arts at Angeloria’s will be presenting nine of my 10-Minute plays as a fundraiser for the Southington theater.” None of the plays has been staged before.
He began writing 10-minute plays three years ago. Mostly comedic, they are rooted in personal experience and observation. “My play, The Drawing, came about during a period when it seemed every lotto drawing was for an unbelievable amount of money. I thought – what would I do with all that money if I won? The Wait concerns a theater critic and his friend who are caught in the gridlock of audience members leaving the theater after a performance of Mamma Mia!” Not all of the plays are humorous. “The Suitcase, involves a married couple coming to a major decision about their life together,” he said. “It has a serious theme with a surprise ending that no one sees coming. When I saw it staged in Rhode Island, I had a tear in my eye at the end – and I wrote it.”
His busy September ends with a table reading of his one-act play, Conduct Unbecoming. In the play, five faculty members from a college’s student conduct board arrive at a secluded island retreat for a routine workshop, led by a newly hired administrator with a shadowy past. When one member dies under mysterious circumstances, secrets start to be revealed, and the lives of the other remaining participants become suddenly endangered. Who shall survive? “Before retiring in June 2021, I had worked in higher education for over 40 years,” Brown said. “So, I have intimate knowledge of the inner workings of a university campus. Let’s just say I put that to good use in the play.”
Go to StuartJBrown.com for ticket information and more about the Festivals.
