“ALWAYS have pen or paper with me,” Ogdensburg playwright says

OGDENSBURG — Sooner or later, every drama critic manages to mention in a review that “the material is the star” of the play.

With all due respect to the two fine amateur actresses, Jill Bruyere and Brenda Bryant-Morrow, who got the laughs at the Oct. 1 Ogdensburg Public Library fundraiser play, “www.match.wrong!”, the material may well have been the star of the show. And that could have been true a year ago with the presentation “If A Snake Bites You.”

In either case, a critique like that would have pleased Barbara C. Agarwal. The Ogdensburg resident wrote and directed both plays as fundraising vehicles for the library. A former teacher, published medical research writer, poet and local theater director, the Boston-born Mrs. Agarwal has a weakness for going for the big laugh.

“I do love to write humorous works and comedies the most,” she said. “I seldom let the opportunity for sharing a pun or double entendre, even at the risk of interrupting someone if I know it will reap a good chuckle for everyone.”

Yet there was no chuckling for her when she was 11 years old and in the fifth grade and was caught plagiarizing a poem that was published in the venerable Boston Globe.

“Since that early and embarrassing experience, I am careful to reference and credit every other author even remotely part of my writing,” she said.

While she loves comedy, not all of Mrs. Agarwal’s writing is for laughs. She is preparing an article about the organ donor process with Jennifer S. Shaver, nurse manager of the intensive care unit at Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center in Ogdensburg. And her encouragement of local would-be poets and writers is the drive behind the upcoming “open mic night.” It is part of Ogdensburg Free Academy’s Learn4Life adult evening class, in cooperation with the library. Open mic night will be held for six Mondays, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 14 at Ogdensburg Free Academy.

Mrs. Agarwal’s friends are appreciative, especially at the library where her two plays between them raised more than $1,200 to buy books.

“She’s one of our biggest boosters,” said Wayne L, Miller, the library’s director. “Barbara is an extremely loyal and hard-working volunteer. She brings to the library great enthusiasm, ideas and a willingness to help out in any way that she can.”

For all her enthusiasm, Mrs. Agarwal is serious in her view of the power of the written and spoken word.

Especially in these trying times.

“As traumatic as these times of war and economic peril are for our country and our world, I believe that it will be the orators, the poets, the artists and the radical visionaries, all younger than ourselves, that will lead us out of the abyss,” she said.

And they would be best advised to follow Mrs. Agarwal’s advice number one.

“I continue to always have pen and paper with me,” she said.