5 Questions with Emma Iacometta

After the Festival in 2013 we asked the four playwrights from the High School division to answer 5 questions about their plays and about themselves. It turns out that those responses were never published, so we are happy to share them with you in the days leading up to the submission deadlines for the 2014 Festival.

We begin with our first playwright, Emma Iacometta.

Emma Iacometta
11th grade, Bergen County Academies

1. What inspired you to write You Definitely Got All That from Your Mother?

I decided to take a playwriting elective at school and, what came with that, was the assignment to write a play. For years, my mother and I have discussed how interesting my life background was, thus I decided to write a play based of my personal family situation. Of course, not every detail is the same, but I wanted the basic outline of the play to be like that of mine to get the word out that "modern" and "progress" families are cool!  

2. What else have you written?

Following the assignment to write a play came the assignment to write a screenplay. I just finished writing a draft of a short film. Other than school assignments, however, I do not write often.

3. In your bio you mention that you are planning a career in stage management. What do you like about being a stage manager?

First of all, I love being organized. To me, there is something so beautiful about a Stage Manager's binder; script, rehearsal reports, lists, cues, all perfectly placed. There is also an important balance that needs to be maintained with friendly authority and professional authority. For a good chunk of the time, you get to be the person who people come to for information and to chat about the show, but there are some moments where you have to lay down the line. The constant shift is exciting. I prefer it to being on stage because, at that point, you have control of the ship. You get the exhilarating feeling of performing in front of people through the cues you call and the set pieces you direct.

4. What other aspects of theatre do you enjoy?

All of them! Everything from set crew to assistant director. I love the little specific, yet incredibly important jobs, such as a dresser and light board operator. In future studies, I hope to learn more about the actual technical parts, such as programming a moving light or understanding a microphone pack. Though I have studied the on-stage things (dance, acting, singing) for years, I want to move on to a pursue everything about the backstage.

5. If you could have three wishes granted, what would they be?
          1. A Boston University acceptance letter.

          2. More cats.

          3. My boyfriend to go to college closer than Chicago.

You can find Emma's bio, as well as bios for the other high school playwrights from 2013, on the NJ Young Playwrights Festival website (linked here).

Submission Reminder!

Our Title Page Information database shows that we may have 105 entries to the 2014 NJ Young Playwrights Festival so far; however, we have not received anywhere near as many scripts. If you are submitting work to the Festival, please remember that you must register online AND send us your script via email. Contact us for help, if needed. Thanks!

An excerpt from About to Pop! by Ben Muzi (2009)

Some inspiration from About to Pop! by Ben Muzi (NJYPF 2009).

About to Pop! follows Andy, a high school senior, whose excitement about the future as expressed through a class project are gravely misinterpreted by the adults in his life. Below is the poem that sparks the controversy that almost derails Andy's plans. He speaks this poem at the end of the play.

Exploring

Searching for a life.

Discovering & imagining.

Building my concerto.

Keeping on the map.

Free to touch

briefly upon the mosaic.

Ready to go-

Because I am about to pop!

Andy (Jeff Ronan) sharing his poem with the audience at the end of About to Pop! (2009)

2 Months to Go!

There are two months left before the submission deadlines for the 2014 NJ Young Playwrights Festival! How's your script going?

Revolutionary Plays

We've just recently updated the guidelines for the 2014 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival with information about a new division for this year: Revolutionary Plays!

For the 2014 season of the New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival (NJYPF), Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey (PTNJ) will commemorate the 350th anniversary of the founding of the state of New Jersey with a special submission category called “Revolutionary Plays”. 

The Revolutionary Plays category will be open to NJ students grades 4-12. Script submission and formatting guidelines are the same as the general categories of the NJYPF, with the exception that the subject matter relates to specific people, places, and events from New Jersey’s role in the American Revolution. For the purpose of this project, we will consider the Revolutionary period to be from 1765 to 1787. 

Submissions to the Revolutionary Plays must be inspired by New Jersey’s Revolutionary War history. While we are interested in unique takes on historical plays, historical drama is certainly encouraged, but not required, for submission. 

Playwrights should research their subject and, if possible, conduct on-site research at an historic Revolutionary area site in New Jersey and/or to speak with an interpreter or historian. The website of The Crossroads of the American Revolution (http://www.RevolutionaryNJ.org) will be a helpful tool in discovering historic sites in the various regions of the state. You also may find information through the National, State, and County Parks websites. 

We recommend visiting sites that host interpretive and encourage you to check with area libraries for artifacts with local significance that they might have in their collections.   

Submission and Selection Process Scripts should be submitted online via the NJYPF website (http://www.njypf.org) by the January deadline. Script readers from PTNJ will adjudicate the Revolutionary Plays for artistic merit in accordance with the general procedure for the contest. Select scripts will get a second look by additional readers from the theatre and historical communities who may determine the winners.   

Performances Winning plays will be given staged-readings during the annual NJ Young Playwrights Festival in spring 2014. Additional plans to stage readings of plays at historical sites are also possible, given the subject matter or setting of the winning plays.   

The winning playwrights in the Revolutionary Plays division will each receive a $100 Savings Bond, and the students’ schools will receive a $50 Gift Card towards the purchase of books for their school library.

Festival starts in a few days!

We're excited to begin rehearsing for the Festival on Sunday. We have a great cast and creative staff in place and are excited to bring such imaginative work to life. Stay tuned to this page and our Facebook and Twitter feeds for updates through the Festival!

Junior HS and Elementary plays due today

Arrived this morning to find that we've received half the number of scripts that were submitted to us last year, which is very exciting! Please keep them coming in...

A reminder that today is the deadline for play submissions from students in grades 4-9. Scripts must be received by 11:59 pm in order to be eligible for this year's contest. See the website for the two-step submission process: http://www.njypf.org/

High school plays due today

Today is the deadline for play submissions from students in grades 10-12. Scripts must be received by 11:59 pm in order to be eligible for this year's contest. See the website for the two-step submission process: http://www.njypf.org/

(Students in grades 4-9 you have until 11:59 pm tomorrow!)

One day more!

One day more until the first submission deadline for the NJ Young Playwrights Festival (grades 10-12 only; those of you in grades 4-9 have until Tuesday).

A little inspiration from the Les Mis 10th Anniversary cast in concert at Royal Albert Hall in London.

http://youtu.be/jPsy5ChXGHI

Sharing for revision

(portions of this post were originally published on January 8, 2009)

I hope you’ve had a great holiday filled with inspiration for your play. Some scripts have already started to come in to the office and I look forward to being inundated with them over the next two weeks. There is just a little over a week until your plays need to be submitted for entry into the 2013 NJ Young Playwrights Contest. This means that you still have some time for last minute revisions and tweaking before January 14 and 15th. Be sure to follow the guidelines for submission on the NJYPF webpage at http://www.njypf.org.

Perhaps this weekend you can get together with a group of friends or family who’s opinion you trust and have an informal reading of the play. This doesn’t need to be a formal presentation, or a fully acted reading (though it can if you want it to be). Often a reading like this works best when everyone is hanging around the living room on couches or chairs. An informal reading will provide you with the opportunity to hear the play outside of your head and see how actors or your intended audience might respond to the piece.

I know that receiving critique on something that you’ve written can be uncomfortable to bear. This is why it is important to keep the event informal and only include people whose opinions you trust. It is also helpful to inform your group that the goal of the reading is for you to hear it out loud and potentially strengthen some areas. You may want to provide your readers with a list of questions you have, or certain sections of the play that you are unsure about. Ask the group to tell you what they liked FIRST, and then get into suggestions, questions, or ideas.

IMPORTANT! - Always remember that YOU are the playwright! Everyone who reads or sees your play will respond to it differently; will have his or her own opinion about how your story should be told. It is important that you listen to what people have to say, but in the end, this is your play and you have the final say in how it is written. Just remember that the goal of writing a play is to communicate an idea to the largest audience possible. The reactions of your reading group may give you an idea of what a larger audience does and does not get from your play. If they are missing something that you want the audience to get, you may want to see where you might be able to make revisions to get that point across.

Rewriting is tough, especially after you've put so much into completing that first draft. But it is well worth the trouble. Have fun!

Happy writing!

"Silence is golden."

You’ve probably heard the phrase above before. The saying has ancient roots and can mean different things depending on the context in which it is spoken. Often I hear it used with the meaning that being silent is better than speaking. That may or may not be true under certain circumstances and is an interesting idea to consider when writing your play.

Each character in your play should speak with a unique voice. That means individual speech patterns, favorite phrases, and things like that. They way in which a character talks can say a lot about that character’s emotions, thoughts, ideas, and relationships with others. What might it mean when a character speaks in longer sentences? What about shorter – perhaps one word – phrases? What about one who takes a lot of pauses as opposed to a character who speaks quickly and without much stopping… or thinking? These qualities of speech help to form individual personalities for each of your characters, but also provide actors and directors with a number of cues about how to portray the people of your play, as well as the tone of the scene, etc.

I am drawn to characters who don’t say much. By this I mean those who don’t speak a lot in the play (don’t have many lines), or who answer in short sentences. To me, when a character doesn’t speak it means that he or she is thinking and that those thoughts may or may not always come out for the audience to hear. Much like the unopened door, the unspoken line can be quite powerful and bring the audience into the play.

As you go through a draft of your play and you find sections where there may be a lot of talking, or that are in need of some intrigue and excitement, see how silence might influence it.

Happy writing!

Building... suspense!

“There is nothing more frightening than a closed door.”

Imagine that you are watching a play or a movie in which a character approaches a closed door, but has no idea what he or she is going to find behind it. Maybe this is Alice in Wonderland and Alice is facing the small door through which the White Rabbit just disappeared. She is curious to follow the rabbit, but uncertain what is going to happen on the other side. What should she do? What is going to happen on the other side? Alice doesn’t know and, if we as an audience are invested in the story, we share in that moment with her because it is familiar to us. We have all been in a position where we are faced with something that is unknown. In that moment we might think: What do I do? What will happen when I do that? We may feel any number of emotions at that point – anxiety, adventure, fear, excitement, or maybe all of those at once! Creating that tension for a character can create a sense of suspense within the audience. That draws them in and leaves them wanting to know more. This is called “suspense”.

At the heart of suspense is the idea put forth in the quote above: when a character is faced with something that is unknown, the audience’s imagination will create a scenario that makes the situation personally suspenseful to them. That is probably why the quote above is often attributed to Alfred Hitchcock, a filmmaker who created some of the iconic horror and suspense movies of the 1950s and 60s. (However, it is not clear that Hitchcock is actually the speaker of this phrase giving the phrase its own unknown quality!) Radio plays have also used this idea to trigger an audience’s imagination. This was important because the audience could only hear the story and had to “see” it in their minds. The audience for your play will be able to both hear and see the action, but using suspense and the idea of the unknown can be useful to keeping them (and in some ways, your characters) invested in the story.

This is related to the idea of “raising the stakes”, which was talked about in a previous post (linked here). When you raise the stakes for a character, you are challenging him or her in the quest to get what they need/want. As I discussed before that might including doing things that a character doesn’t think is possible, but it might also mean having to face something, or someone, whom they are not sure about. That leads me to another thought about silence…

… which I will share in the next post!

And now I have you thinking: What is he going to say about silence? You don’t know, or maybe you might now. Either way, your imagination is running and the thoughts are flying. The suspense is building, but you’ll just need to tune in again next time to find out…

Until then, happy writing!