A HOUSE DIVIDED
"IN ARENA, A PLAYWRIGHT'S GODSEND"
        

   EXCERPTED FROM NEWSDAY'S "ON THE ISLE" - 02/13/05  

    Article by Aileen Jacobson 
    Staff Writer 

          The double pile of manuscripts in Fred De Feis' crowded wood-paneled 
office is at least a foot high, containing some 50or more new plays by 
hopeful authors from all over the world, waiting to be read.

          "We get 250 to 300 plays a year," said De Feis,the producer 
and director of Arena Players Repertory Company. His playhouse, 
with a main and a second stage, is tucked in a strip shopping mall 
across from Republic Airport in East Farmingdale, where it alighted 
in 1972. From 1959 to 1963, Arena was actually in an airport: Idlewild 
(now JFK) in Queens. That was after its birth in 1954 and first home in 
a downtown Brooklyn YWCA.

          For most of those years, DeFeis has produced world premieres,
usually one or two a year. In 1974, he premiered the then-unknown 
Alan Menken's first musical, "Dear Worthy Editor."Menken went on to
write "Little Shop of Horrors," "Beauty and the Beast" and other 
Disney hits. Another success story is Joseph Dougherty, whose 
"Murder for Pleasure" debuted at Arena in 1977 and who went on 
to write "Digby," which won awards Off-Broadway, and the book for 
Broadway's "My Favorite Year." Several plays that had their first outings 
at Arena moved to Off-Broadway and other regional stages, De Feis said.

          "It amazes me that playwrights just write play after play and 
keep submitting them," said De Feis. Arena's productions are recorded in 
a national theater yearbook and its search for new material is publicized
by the Dramatists Guild and other trade groups.

          De Feis said he mainly goes for plays on provocative social 
issues, including abortion, AIDS and prostitution. "They don't make money,
but they challenge me," he said. They also often engender allegiance
from the chosen playwrights.

          One of those is Sean David Bennett, whose "A House Divided" 
is the latest drama to challenge De Feis.The play, about a
priest falsely accused of molesting a boy, and the effects on 
the priest's Irish-American family, opens Thursday at Arena's 
Main Stage theater and runs throughMarch 13. "This is not the 
kind of entertainment Long Islander want," De Feis added.
"They want musicals or comedies."

          To keep money coming in - though the nonprofit theater also 
receives grants and contributions - De Feis is presenting 
"Murder at the Howard Johnson's," by Ron Clark and Sam Bodrick,
at the smaller theater next door. "I revive it whenever I need money," he said.

          Bennett said that De Feis "is an absolute godsend.
 I don't understand why he isn't more famous.... He just has an
 instinct for what works on stage, and what doesn't.... He's brilliant."

         Bennett - whose day job is senior program coordinator at Boston
University's law school - won a 2004 Edward F. Albee Playwriting 
Fellowship to hone his drama while staying at Albee's oceanfront 
Montauk home in June. (Albee chatted with him every morning, 
but not about the play, he said.) However, it still needed many
revisions, as most plays do. "From the first rehearsal, I realized 
Fred knows more than I will ever know about what the audience
will like, and what will bore them," said Bennett.

           De Feis said Bennett's was the fourth play about priests and
pedophilia he read in close succession, and by far the best. 
"Most playwrights don't know how o flesh out characters,
"but Bennett's have "no empty holes. You understand them."

           His play had been turned down many times, said Bennett,
"because it's a very strong indictment of the Catholic Church.
"Bennett was "baptized into he church," he said, but has been long 
disaffected by what he called its "abuse of power." He said he was
spurred to start the play, in 2003, by scandals in Boston and by a report 
he read about a young priest's fate in Baltimore.

           Bennett, who has been writing plays for about five years, 
after acting, directing and doing other writing, said that last year
he sent out about 100 copies of this play, 100 letters without
a script, and another 100 mailings about other plays.

          Largely because Arena agreed to produce "A House Divided," 
the play now has a healthy future, including upcoming runs in 
Baltimore, Boston and Ireland. It also will be produced at the 
Journeyman Theater Ensemble in Washington, D.C., whose 
artistic director asked him to be their playwright in residence. One 
of his plays, "Fall Out," won a 2004 best play award at the Playwrights' 
Platform in Boston, he said, and another, "Trick," about spousal abuse, 
is to be performed by Manhattan's Off-Broadway Abington Theater.

          Tickets to Arena, 296 Rte. 109, East Farmingdale, 
are $16 Thursdays at 8:30 p.m., $18 Fridays at 8:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m., 
and $22 Saturdays at 8:30 p.m. Call 516-293-0674 or visit www.arenaplayers.org.