'License' to write -- and teach

Teaching drama in his English class keeps Jack Canfora humble, even as he makes his Off-Broadway debut as a playwright.

Canfora, 42, who has taught 11th- and 12th-grade English at Plainview-Old Bethpage JFK High School for 12 years, says putting "Death of a Salesman" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" on the curriculum "keeps the bar pretty high for me. I can't get too smug." His play "Poetic License" officially opened this week at 59E59 Theaters in midtown.

"I'm very excited," he admits. "It's part of the evolution of me as a writer."

TAKING 'LICENSE' Canfora, who grew up in Elwood and now lives in East Northport, began his theater career as a Shakespearean actor studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. "For some reason, it never occurred to me to write plays," he says, until he started writing comedy sketches for a New York troupe known as the Waiting Room in the '90s. "I was creating an hour's worth of material a week," he recalls. "It was great training. The audience is pretty smart and honest with you."

An early iteration of his first play, "Place Setting," premiered in 2004 at Arena Players in East Farmingdale. His next, "A World of Snow," received a reading in 2005. He retitled it "Poetic License" and brought it to New Jersey Repertory Theater, a regional company specializing in new works. Reviews were mixed but encouraging. Critics and director Evan Bergman suggested he rewrite the second act. "While 'Poetic License' is my second play," Canfora says, "it's also my most recent. Some of it I wrote 10 years ago, some last Saturday," he adds with a laugh.

"License" is the story of a professor on the cusp of becoming poet laureate. His daughter and her boyfriend pay a visit, but the boyfriend has a secret agenda. "It's really about how much a child should know or want to know about their parents," Canfora says.

NEXT UP Canfora's third play, "Jericho," set in that Long Island community, premiered at New Jersey Rep in October after being selected for the National New Play Festival.

Meanwhile, he's working with director Harris Yulin on "Fellow Travelers," a drama about the personal and professional relationship of Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe.

Miller is one of his heroes, Canfora says, along with Tom Stoppard and fellow Long Islander Richard Greenberg ("Take Me Out," "Eastern Standard"). Not too shabby.

WHAT "Poetic License" by Jack Canfora

WHEN | WHERE 7:15 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 8:15 p.m. Fridays, 2:15 and 8:15 p.m. Saturdays, 3:15 p.m. Sundays through March 4 at 59E59 Theater B, 59 E. 59th St., Manhattan

INFO $35; 59e59.org, 212-753-5959