Having your play performed in New York City is what many playwrights strive for throughout their careers, but for Dean Bevan, it was just a bonus.
Bevan, 70, retired from Baker University in 2000 after 31 years of teaching English literature and creative writing.
In 2002, a friend of Bevan’s suggested he go to a play-writing workshop. Having gotten involved in theater after retiring and having a good experience with it, Bevan agreed.
“It was the summer of 2002, and I knew he was a very good writer,” James Benkard, Bevan’s friend, said. “He did his dissertation on George Bernard Shaw, and he’s probably too modest to tell you this, but his dissertation was an encyclopedia of all of Shaw’s works. I knew he was a very educated man, and I thought he’d be fun to work with.”
Since that summer, Bevan and Benkard have worked together numerous times and Bevan has written 12 plays. All vary in length and genre.
“I just write whatever I’m feeling at the time,” he said. “They’re all different, some are comedies, some are dramas. I write whatever comes in my mind.”
In 2002 “Haunted” came to mind.
“Haunted” is a play about two married people in their 40s who are visited by the ghost of the man’s former lover.
“Haunted” is one of the many plays Bevan has sent out to contests, but this one took home the big prize.
“I found out in early July while my wife and I were vacationing in Colorado,” Bevan said. “I had won another contest and knew it was going to be performed in New Jersey on July 26 as a staged reading, so I was pretty high about that. Then I got an e-mail saying it was going to have a five-night run in New York, and I was really tickled.”
Bevan said he had almost forgotten he had even entered the contest.
“Part of the deal here is you send these things off to contests and you don’t hear from them for five or six months, so when you hear, you’ve almost forgotten about it. And many times, it is ‘Sorry, your work isn’t what we’re looking for right now.’”
Jeff Sorrels, another friend of Bevan’s, who has been in and directed several of his plays, was thrilled when he heard “Haunted” would be in New York City at the Algonquin Theater.
“I thought it was really great because he had put a lot of hard work in it,” Sorrels said. “I think that particular piece is one of his better plays. It’s one of the ones that you read that kind of stands out, I think, in a unique way from some of the other stuff that he’s written. It’s a little more mature, a little more three-dimensional so when we got a chance to select what plays we wanted to direct, of course, I picked that one. I liked it best, so I was really happy to hear that that particular one did well.”
The contest, which was put on by Love Creek Productions, was one of the four contests “Haunted” has won.
“I was surprised and in disbelief that I was going to get a play performed in New York City,” Bevan said. “It’s kind of where you want to be in theater if you could be anywhere.”
