Join us for the first program in the 2026 Season! The Theater Project will present a script-in-hand performance followed by a lively discussion with the playwright, director, actors, and audience. This program takes place at the Cranford Community Center's fully accessible 110-seat theater.
This program has been made possible by funds from the Union County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs, a partner of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Funds benefiting this program have also been provided by the Friends of the Cranford Public Library.
If you need access to a large print program for the show, please email
Y3JhbmZvcmRsaWJyYXJ5IHwgY3JhbmZvcmRsaWJyYXJ5ICEgb3Jn or call the Reference Desk of the Library with two week's notice of the program so we may have it available to you the day of.
Today's play reading is Conshohocken McFaddens
Anna and George McFadden meet and marry in 1919 in a small mill town outside Philadelphia, as the country emerges from the devastation of the “war to end all wars” and history’s deadliest epidemic. They struggle to survive and stay true to their values as the Great Depression, another epidemic (polio) and a second world war endlessly thwart Anna's dreams. Will Anna and George’s beliefs keep them afloat in a world of change and challenge, or sink them? The play invites audiences to re-visit the struggle between what's good for the family versus the hopes and dreams of its individual members, in an era -- 1919 to 1959-- that bears resemblance to the present one, with its existential and economic crises.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lynn Aylward is an emerging playwright who recently moved from San Francisco via Scotland to New Jersey. She was a long-time member of the Writers Pool at Playground in San Francisco and her short plays have been produced in California, Florida and New York. Her full-length plays have been semi-finalists in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the City Lights Theatre (San Jose) Festival. She taught playwriting for Rising Voices, a theater group for incarcerated women in Oakland and is a co-founder of Same Boat Theater, an eco-justice performance group. Her play “Three Chords and the Truth” was in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2021. Lynn is delighted to be part of The Theater Project and have a third play presented in the New Play Reading Series.
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