MY OTHER LIFE

Derrell Owens stages plays with messages of hope

The senior student benefits analyst (and lead house manager at Everyman Theatre) turned to writing plays as a bored-in-math ninth grader

Derrell Owens in front of Everyman Theatre

Image caption: Derrell Owens at Everyman Theatre, where he is lead house manager. His own work, presented elsewhere, is produced by Derrell Owens Productions.

Credit: WILL KIRK / JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

When Derrell Owens is hanging around talking with his friends, somebody will often say, Watch it, because he's going to put it in a play. That's the risk you take when you're friends with a playwright. Anything you say could be material for their next work, especially if it's juicy. "I love conflict, but only on stage," Owens says. "It's just so interesting to see it play out."

For decades, Owens—a senior benefits analyst in the Office of Student Benefits—has been writing, directing, and sometimes acting in his own plays. He also works part time as the lead house manager at Everyman Theatre in Baltimore. "Every job I've ever had, including at Hopkins, has always been some customer service type of job," he says. "I like dealing with people."

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Owens' love of theater started in the ninth grade, when he was bored in math class. "I should have been paying attention, but I started writing a play." It was called The Class Clown, he recalls, adding that the play was about a classmate, not him. "For some reason, I enjoyed it, and it stuck," Owens says. With encouragement from his English teacher, he continued writing plays and joined his high school's theater group.

Owens put his playwriting on pause when he started college. He majored in zoology, intending to be a veterinarian. By his second year as an undergraduate, the need to work pulled him away from school, and he never went back to finish his degree. A few years after leaving college, Owens realized something was missing. It was playwriting. He began writing more frequently. "It was almost like entertainment for me," he says.

Nearly 30 years ago, he began working at Johns Hopkins as a receptionist in Human Resources on the Homewood campus. In his current position in HR, he administers benefits for students in all nine academic divisions.

What really kick-started his playwriting career was a contest in 1999—which he almost didn't enter.

The ABC network and Baltimore's Arena Players, the oldest continually performing and historically African American community theater in the United States, were holding their annual playwriting contest. For several years, Owens had submitted a play but had never been selected.

"All of my plays have to do with some kind of resilience, some kind of overcoming, some kind of encouraging message."
Derrell Owens
JHU Student Benefits analyst

"I remember saying, I'm not going to do it this time," he says. "And a friend of mine said, 'Well, you never know. This could be your year.'" With just 27 days left before the contest deadline, Owens wrote and submitted a play that won first place. As it turned out, a colleague at Hopkins learned this before he did. One of Owens' co-workers called him and said, "I'm looking at The Baltimore Sun, and there's a person with your name who won first place in a playwriting contest."

Owens' winning play was titled The Family Mantle and was about three estranged brothers whose parents were killed in a plane crash and their being forced to deal with the aftermath together. The play was produced by ABC and aired on TV in February 2000 for Black History Month.

In addition to giving him recognition, the experience opened Owens' eyes to the bigger possibilities of stage productions. Instead of the simple canvas backdrops he was used to, ABC built an "amazing" set for The Family Mantle. When the network called Owens to come to the station to see and approve the set, "I was not expecting what I saw. I felt like I just walked into someone's apartment, like this TV soap opera or something. It was beautiful."

These days, Owens gets to see professional sets all the time in his role at Everyman Theatre. He started there in 2012 as a volunteer usher and was eventually hired to be the lead house manager. He trains and supervises a team of ushers who make sure all patrons, including ones with special needs such as those in wheelchairs, have a pleasant experience. "It has been amazing for me because it's allowed me to see professional plays on a regular basis," Owens says about his time at Everyman. Sitting in the booth with the stage managers, he also has learned more about stage production.

Driven by the desire to produce his own work, Owens launched a theater company, Derrell Owens Productions, in 2015. It started with his friends acting in his plays locally and has grown into a paid company of actors performing stage plays around the country. As the artistic director, Owens rewards his acting company with a trip each year, taking the group to such destinations as Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; Chicago; and Deep Creek, Maryland.

Owens has not put on a play since the pandemic. COVID took a toll on live productions, he points out, and many theaters are still struggling to bounce back. But there's reason to be hopeful: Derrell Owens Productions is producing a romantic comedy called To Be Continued, which will be performed in August at Black Rock Arts Center in Germantown, Maryland.

The play's title hints at a common theme in Owens' work. "All of my plays have to do with some kind of resilience, some kind of overcoming, some kind of encouraging message—that we all find ourselves facing challenges, but life isn't over. There's always a better day coming."

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