John Elliott and McCarter Theater, perfect together. A regular theatergoer at McCarter since he was 11, Elliott is the new marketing manager at the theater. A graduate of West Windsor-Plainsboro High School, Class of 2000, he is eager to encourage people of all ages to share his enjoyment of live theater. ##M:[more]##
Elliott went through the West Windsor-Plainsboro school system from first grade on. During his high school years, he performed in the musical and senior one-acts all four years, and did the fall dramas from sophomore year on. He also wrote two plays in high school, both of which were performed as Senior One-Acts. The first, “Strangers in Paradise,” went up in May, 1999. The second, “Left to Chance,” was workshopped with playwright Nilo Cruz in a playwriting class as part of McCarter’s education programs held at the high school. The play was performed in May, 2000.
Elliott has been writing since he was very young, but during his junior year, his attention turned towards playwriting, thanks to the influence of history teacher Ed Holub; English teachers Don Gilpin, Betsy Gray, and Rose Zimmer; and drama teacher Demis Ashton. “My AP English teacher, Nadine Black, really encouraged a pursuit of dramatic writing — I think I swapped more than a dozen potentially boring essays for plays that year,” he says. “I mean, really — when you have a choice between writing an essay on Hamlet or writing a short play where Ophelia and Polonius get locked in a room together — I don’t know about you, but I’m going to take the second choice every time. Dr. Black gave me the invaluable gift of knowing the value of creative thinking and I owe her a huge debt.”
Elliott attended the Tomato Patch theater program at Kelsey Theater for three summers and later worked there as a counselor and instructor. He also attended a seven-week summer intensive at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama.
His affiliation with McCarter began when he was 15 and his parents bought him subscriber tickets — two sets so that he would be able to bring a friend.
Elliott, who was in the honors program at the College of New Jersey, graduated in 2004 with a degree in English and classics. His primary extracurricular activities were with the Signal Ink (the college society for writers), All College Theater, and Opera Theater. He directed eleven productions during the four years, and wrote constantly. Seven of his short works were performed in college. “I had three great playwriting professors — Don Evans, Lee Harrod, and Sheila Callaghan,” he says. “Sheila, in particular, was fantastic — she was the first teacher and mentor I had who made it clear that I had to write what I felt like writing first, and worry about the audience later.
Elliott worked at Grounds for Sculpture from 2001 to 2004, first on the admissions staff, and eventually worked his way up to be the events assistant.
He was brought into Princeton Summer Theater when he was cast as Henry in “The Fantasticks,” directed by Rachel Miller, also a member of the WW-P Class of 2000. In 2003 he played Polonius in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” In 2004 he was in “Scenes from American Life” and in 2005 he played Shmendiman in “Picasso at the Lapin Agile.” “I don’t particularly enjoy acting, but every now and again, someone threw me on stage,” he says. “It was a lot of fun.”
In 2004 he left Grounds for Sculpture to become the full-time publicity director for PST. “My experiences at GFS and PST led to a sharp interest in arts management,” he says. “In the fall of 2004, I began my studies as part of the first cohort of the master of arts management program at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia.” He received his master’s degree in 2005.
While at George Mason, Elliott spent a year as assistant managing director of the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. He later spent a year as managing director of Sycamore Rouge, a small performance theater in Petersburg, Virginia, about 20 miles south of Richmond.
His play, “Forward Motion,”published by Playscripts in 2005, was recently anthologized in their collection, “Great Plays IV.” “Meanwhile, I’m also still writing — I was recently invited to participate in National Playwriting Month, where, in the month of November, 12 playwrights will complete a play from start to finish,” he says.
His mother, Elizabeth Elliott, a West Windsor resident, is a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. His father, Bill Elliott of Hamilton, owns a Paul Davis Restoration firm in Mount Holly. His brother, Matthew, 19, is a sophomore at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
“I come into work and feel like the luckiest person in the world — my job is to take something I love and help bring others into the theater and share these amazing performances,” he says.
