Two plays written by 2nd Act Players’ founder John N. Frank will be performed by two other theater groups online this June and July. The plays were originally performed by the 2nd Act Players in 2017 and 2018.
A theater group called Play Readings with Friends will read Frank’s New Year’s Eve at Grandma’s House Friday, June 3 at 7 p.m. eastern time. For more information on how to listen and watch, click here.
Then on July 11, the Lakeland (Fla.) Theater will feature an online reading of the play Frank wrote with his daughter Jenny Frank, Moving Boxes, in its reading series. For more information, check the theater’s website by clicking here.
Frank has reassembled the original 2nd Act Players’ cast to read Moving Boxes that evening, so it will be an online reunion for them as well.
“With our 2nd Act Players’ theater still dark because of ongoing Covid concerns, I’ve had to leave the nest, so to speak, and try to convince other theaters to perform my works. I’ve entered many, many script-writing competitions this year. It’s gratifying to have these two groups find my work good enough to give public readings of them,” says Frank.
Frank also recently consulted with a New York-based playwright for suggestions on how to revise New Year’s Eve at Grandma’s House to attract more theaters to the work.
“He surprised me by suggesting I need a better title, one that sums up what the play is about, so I’m hoping for some suggestions after our June reading of it,” Frank notes. He’s also starting work on prequels involving subsets of the Smaldone family, an effort to reach theaters which in these Covid times increasingly want shorter plays with casts no larger than four people.
Frank also has been auditioning for acting roles but with little success. The one small community theater that did cast him in a play fired him a short time later for his disagreements with the director. “I got fired from a nonpaying job, I think that’s a record, too bad it came too late to be a chapter in my book, Always Be Job Hunting” Frank says. “I’m still auditioning now but only for larger theaters whose approaches to theater I’m in synch with,” he says.