For Rosemary Parrillo, the play’s the thing – the thing that keeps the longtime Marlton resident motivated day in and day out.
“Every morning, I get up, have breakfast and at nine o’clock, I go into my home office,” Parrillo said, “and the first thing I do is go online and see who’s accepting script submissions.”
The 74-year-old – who recently celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary – has written 23 plays, including five full-length works, seven one-acts and 11 10-minute plays. Parrillo has also written a screenplay and is currently working on a new full-length play.
Her one-act work about two women dealing with cancer, “The Waiting Room,” won best play at the Ritz Theatre Company’s 2025 One-Act Play Festival in August.
“Even when I’m dealing with very serious issues, there’s always humor,” Parrillo explained. “Is it dark humor? Sure. Snarky humor? Absolutely.”
A South Philadelphia native, Parrillo grew up in Maple Shade and attended Holy Cross Prep in Delran, where she graduated in 1969. She attended Burlington County College (BCC), then transferred to Glassboro State College, now Rowan University, where she earned a bachelor’s in English and teaching credentials in 1973.
At 19 – while still at BCC – Parrillo got a copy girl job at the Burlington County Times in Willingboro, where she met her future husband, Ray, a former sportswriter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was the beginning of her 48-year career in print journalism.
After working her way up the editorial ranks to assistant Sunday editor at the Times, Parrillo joined the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill in 1976, where she worked on the night desk editing copy and writing headlines and captions. She eventually held positions that included assistant metro editor, metro columnist and features editor.
Parrillo left the Courier-Post in 1998 and the following year, became the features editor at the Newark Star-Ledger. That role resulted in her being named editor in chief of the newspaper’s monthly magazine, Inside Jersey, in 2008. Ten years later, she retired at 67.
But it was at the Courier-Post where Parrillo had a serendipitous encounter that led to playwriting.
“A co-worker told me that she was going to the Walnut Street Theatre School (in Philadelphia) to take a class in playwriting, and asked if I’d like to come along,” she recalled. “That started a five-year relationship with me and the school.
“It really gave you a good idea of how theater works,” Parrillo added. “I think it was a great training ground.”
Parrillo worked on her first play, “Shelter,” while at the school, inspired by a story she had edited at the Courier-Post about a Camden woman who drowned her four kids in the Cooper River. “Shelter” was completed in 1984.
Since then, Parrillo’s journalistic instincts continue to infuse her work.
“I use the same guideline for playwriting as I did for column writing, which was, ‘If I’m boring myself by writing this, then I know I’m sure as hell boring the people who are reading it,'” she acknowledged. “When I’m writing a play, I always try to be cognizant of whether I would want to see this, would I pay money to see this? It has to be entertaining in some way.
“I just hope that my characters are people that you want to spend some time with.”
For more information about Rosemary Parrillo, visit www.rosemaryparrillo.com.
