Joseph M. Paprzycki writes plays that explore the motivation of his characters in order to tell larger stories. 

LAST RITES

LAST RITES is a play about misplaced faith. It unfolds in Camden, New Jersey, in 1967 as this blue-collar city experiences the closing of a major shipyard. If the shipyard is the heart of South Camden, then the soul of this working-class neighborhood is Walt’s Café, a mom and pop corner bar.

There you meet the owners, Walt and Sue Evanuk, whose lives revolve around the rhythms of lunch whistles and shipyard work shifts as they serve up beers and sandwiches to steamfitters, welders, and shipbuilders.

It is here where new rumors about the shipyard’s closing are discussed and discounted. You bear witness to the lives of the ship workers, their wives, and the parish priests as they pass through the doors of Walt and Sue’s bar and give their testament to the stress and strain that economic and social change has brought to their lives and to their beloved city.

Last Rites: Last Rites launched South Camden Theatre Company in 2005 and later opened the Waterfront South Theatre with the opening of South Camden Theatre Company on September 10, 2010— production photos, reviews, and program.

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FORTUNE COOKIES

TENNESSEE'S FINAL CURTAIN

TENNESSEE'S FINAL CURTAIN takes us to a room at the Hotel Elysée in New York City on a cold evening in February of 1983; the night of Tennessee Williams’ death. A look inside this writer's mind shows him visited by the ghosts and demons that led him to his greatest characters and greatest regrets. As the night progresses, so do the visits, all to the apparent confusion of a young room service waiter. We soon learn the mystery behind Tennessee's death; one debated until this very day.

Review: "Opposites Don't Always Attract: Tennessee's Final Curtain at SCTC" — STAGE Magazine

Tennessee's Final Curtain: Production archive: Tennessee's Final Curtain at South Camden Theatre Company (2012), directed by Allen Radway.

NICK OF TIME . . . NICK OF TIME

NICK OF TIME…NICK OF TIME is a one-act play about Nick Virgilio, the Camden haiku master whose work helped push an American haiku movement into the mainstream. Commissioned by the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association, the play imagines the poet's last day: January 1989, a CBS green room in Washington, D.C., where Virgilio waits to tape the national television interview he has spent decades hoping for.

He is not alone. The ghost of Walt Whitman — his favorite poet, and his neighbor in Camden's Harleigh Cemetery — keeps him company. A production manager preparing him for the taping introduces himself as Lawrence. It is the name of Virgilio's brother, the Marine killed in Vietnam in 1967, whose death shadowed everything the poet wrote afterward.

Three characters, roughly twenty minutes, and an ending that arrives before anyone is ready for it.

NICK OF TIME premiered at the Waterfront South Theatre in Camden on January 9, 2011, with two additional performances that month in Norristown, Pennsylvania, as part of Iron Age Theatre's playwright festival. In 2017, the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association produced a film of the play at Woodshop Films in Philadelphia, directed by John Doyle of Iron Age Theatre and performed by Bob Weick, Rocky Wilson, and Ned Pryce, for presentation at the Haiku North America conference in Santa Fe.

Feature: "A Camden Favorite Son Subject of New Film" — Courier-Post

INDOOR PICNIC

INDOOR PICNIC portrayed the change in Camden, New Jersey, from 1960 to 1990 as viewed through the eyes of four members of a fading Polish American club. We saw their neighborhood and city change from a safe, robust area in the 1960’s to one in decline during the 1990’s.

This play is also viewed through the interactions and eyes of the club’s African American cleaning woman, Flossie, who bears witness to the overt racism that was pervasive at that time and is crystallized in her relationship with Stash, a racist member of the club. We see their stories intertwine as the years pass, and we see the tragedy of our city in the 1990s, however elevated by hope.

Review: "Not What We Would Ask For: SCTC's Indoor Picnic is Charming and Uplifting" — STAGE Magazine

​Indoor Picnic: Production archive: Indoor Picnic at South Camden Theatre Company (2012), directed by Raymond Croce.