Astoria Playwright Established As Fringe Artist
By Josh Spiro

For some, August is a month of back-to-school sales and the creeping end of summer, but not for theater buffs. For them, August brings the off-off-Broadway offerings at the New York International Fringe Festival and this year, those offerings included Astoria-based playwright Kari Bentley-Quinn's theatrical debut, "The Permanent Night."

Astoria playwright Kari Bentley-Quinn’s “The Permanent Night” was staged at the New York International Fringe Festival.

The play follows four characters on the night of the 2003 blackout: Spencer (Dave Beagle) and Heather (Vina Less), the superficially perfect upper-crust couple; Jane (Kat Garson), Spencer's rebellious and politically-minded younger sister; and Justin (Cory Whitfield), her new neighbor and romantic interest. Set two years after 9/11, a time when, as Bentley-Quinn described it, the "wound was still fresh" (many initially thought the blackout itself was the result of a terrorist attack), the play focuses on the inextricability of the large and small events in our lives.

"I was thinking about people's smaller, personal tragedies and how they related to what was going on in the world... and how that shapes your belief system," she said.

Bentley-Quinn, who has been writing "since I was old enough to pick up a pen," and authored her first play at the age of 15, had her future in writing postponed by an acting phase.

"Everybody seemed to like my writing a lot more than they liked my acting, [but] it took me a little while to figure out that that was the way I was supposed to be going in the world," she said.

Bentley-Quinn went on to compose a couple of one acts as an undergraduate at Pace University and enrolled in a playwriting class at the Gotham Writers' Workshop.

After finishing the first draft of "The Permanent Night" two years ago, Bentley-Quinn enlisted the help of Maria Romina, a co-worker-cum-producer at her hedge fund day job, and together they shopped the play around. Once it was accepted as part of the Fringe Festival, the other pieces fell into place.

"It couldn't have gone any smoother, honestly," Bentley-Quinn said, adding that her creative vision fit well with the director Heather Arnson's.

Now that the play has received good reviews, Bentley-Quinn is hoping to put it on once more.

"We just don't feel done. we really want to take it further," she said.

This ambition and energy is part of what brought her to New York City. Growing up in small-town Connecticut, she felt out of place and knew she wanted to move to New York.

Though she has been here for almost a decade and lived in both Brooklyn and Manhattan, she said, "Queens has so far been my favorite [place to live] because it's so ethnically diverse and it's like the best parts of the city and the best parts of the suburbs."

Whether "The Permanent Night" finds a new home sooner or later, Bentley-Quinn is already mulling over ideas for her next project. While she doesn't have "the exact plot points yet," she suggested that she might tackle the increasingly heated issue of "women's rights, especially women's reproductive rights." She plans to tread carefully, however, for fear of producing something preachy and contrived and "using the piece as [her] soapbox."

Bentley Quinn is not only concerned about her next play being accessible, but about the accessibility of independent theater.

She imparted what she called her Broadway rant, lamenting, "mainstream theater is completely cost-prohibitive to most people and us indie [productions], we're here, we're doing good work. You can see a great play for 20 bucks and everyone should do that more often."