About NEPP
The New England Playwrights Project is a new, local non-profit, dedicated to discovering writers, songwriters, and lyricists and developing new works of theater. To that end, a vital part of the organization's mission is to educate and inspire the next generation of theater writers and performers. We began pursuing this mission in 2006, with our first Summer Theater Arts Program, offering courses in singing, acting, playwriting and songwriting, with an emphasis on improvisation, collaboration, and discovering the creative process, as well as basic technique. Over the next few years, we intend to develop further programming for young people with an interest in writing and performing live theater.


About our Summer Staff
Robert Klump has been involved actively in the arts and arts education for over fifty years. During that period he has been a high school band/choral director, directed high school plays and musicals, directed and/or produced summer stock, house managed for and worked in the offices of Theatreworks/USA in New York City and in recent years, privately coached actors and singers in NYC, NJ and The Philadelphia area. Many of his former students have gone on to have professional careers in performance and related areas of the arts. Now living in South Hadley, MA, he and his wife, Jan, continue to work with young performers and are active members of the New England Playwrights Project.

Jan Klump has taught voice privately for 40 years first in Michigan, then New York City, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Her voice students have won full scholarships to college, have appeared on Broadway, and run the gamut from persons who say they "can't carry a tune" to those working as professionals in musical theater. For the past 10 years she and her husband, an acting coach, have run a studio together for singers and actors.

James David Jacobs has played cello, recorder and double bass in a wide variety of situations from orchestras and chamber groups to rock bands and ethnic dance ensembles, and played his first professional gig during the Ford administration. He has a long history of writing and improvising music for theater, film, and dance, providing scores for the Oregon and California Shakespeare Festivals, the Living Theatre, a pair of Emmy-nominated documentaries for HBO and PBS, and numerous choreographers. For six years he hosted a weekly morning show on New York's WNYE FM, and has been active as a lecturer and writer about various musical topics. James has been on the faculty of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music since 1999.

Megan Paslawski was born in Philadelphia and raised in several parts of New England. She left for Canada, studying English Literature at McGill University, and came to consider Montreal her hometown. This past year, she attended Trinity College Dublin to achieve a M.Phil in Creative Writing. Megan likes strawberries & champagne, her record player, and her fiancee. Her work has appeared in County Cork's Southword and Incorrigibly Plural: New Writing from the Oscar Wilde Centre.

Colleen Finnegan is a senior at Montclair State University pursuing a B.F.A. degree in Acting. As an Edward J. Bloustein Scholar, she has received two nominations for the American College Theatre Festival's Irene Ryan Scholarship for her roles in Picnic (Millie) and The Dining Room (performing multiple roles in a joint production with the Shanghai Theatre Academy). Colleen's professional credits include Theaterfest's The Role of Della (Elizabeth) and the world premier of Harry Partch's Oedipus at The Alexander Kasser Theatre in NJ. This past year, Colleen worked as a student assistant on the administrative team at the Kasser theatre, dealing directly with international artists. This bubbly little lass has studied in London, produced several cabarets in Montclair (the most recent of which was covered by CBS local news), and often can be seen smiling.