Staging student-written work during Theatre in Our Schools month

We're very busy with young playwrights' work this week! Spent yesterday rehearsing for two school assemblies that will be presented today as part of the Madison Young Playwrights Program. There is another assembly on Thursday and a final presentation late next week.

In the middle of all of the work on Madison, there will also be a meeting of the Selection Panel for the NJ Young Playwrights Festival this Friday. The four of us will meet to select up to 10 scripts from the 33 that advanced to this final round of judging.

To reiterate, we will spend the rest of March contacting and confirming details with the selected playwrights. Results will be posted here in early April.

In the meantime, we hope that you are enjoying Theatre in Our Schools Month and will consider attending a play tomorrow, March 20 for the World Day of Theatre for Children.

National Playwriting Competition at Young Playwrights, Inc. in NYC

If you haven't done so yet, be sure to submit your play to the national young playwrights competition produced by Young Playwrights, Inc in New York City. For more info, click the image below.

Happy writing!

Creating an Emergency Situation

Originally posted on December 4, 2008.

Consider this statement – Some of the strongest stories have a main character that the audience cares about and roots for to achieve his or her goal.

Identifying the emergency in your story is one way to measure how well an audience is able to root for the main character. Think about some of your favorite stories. Why do you like them? Why do you want to see them succeed?

Let’s look at Cinderella again as an example. I indicated that the emergency is when something happens to the character that prompts them to go after their goal/want. For Cinderella, the emergency is the arrival of the invitation to the ball. Now, imagine her story without all of the scenes that occur before emergency (when the invitation to the ball arrives). If the audience is introduced to the character of Cinderella right at that moment, what do they know about her? In that scene, she is just someone trying to get to the ball, but why should the audience care whether or not Cinderella gets to go?

The exposition scenes before the invitation arrives are the key to the audience’s investment in Cinderella’s journey. Without the introduction to the evil stepfamily, the scenes of the horrible way that Cinderella is treated, and the display of Cinderella’s personality as she deals with these events, is what can lead an audience to care about the character and really root for her to find something better.

So, take a look at your play. What is the emergency? When does it occur? What happens beforehand? Make sure to give your audience plenty of time to get to know the main character and what everyday life is like for him or her. When the emergency arrives, the audience will want to see your character succeed almost as much as the character does!

Have fun and happy writing!

Presentation of Summer Playwriting Workshop scenes

Our three summer playwrights worked on two individual projects during this past two-week session. First, a short scene for which each playwright collaborated with two or three students from the Acting Workshop class. The second project, is a longer piece which each playwright is writing independently.

The summer playwriting class reading and critique each other's plays.



The short scenes were presented by the acting class during a final presentation this morning. Pictures from the presentation are to the left.

The longer scenes are currently in progress, but the playwrights have been encouraged to continue writing throughout the summer with the end goal of submitting the scripts to the 2013 New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival.



 On the last day of camp, the playwrights read the current draft of each classmate's script and answered basic questions provided by the author. While this is a bit earlier in the writing process than I might have liked, the playwrights enjoyed hearing other people read and respond to their work. In fact, hearing the acting class read their work was the most impactful part of the session for them. Over the next few weeks, I will read each draft and provide my own feedback, but I also hope the playwrights will continue to send drafts to me throughout the summer. Each has done remarkable work and I cannot wait to see how the plays turn out down the road!

Summer playwriting

Today begins our Summer Theatre Camp at Playwrights Theatre. For this first session, we have seven acting students and three playwriting students. The classes are working separately throughout the morning, but will come together toward the end of the session to collaborate on short scenes that will be presented as part of the acting class' final presentation. This is the first time that we are trying this arrangement with the camp classes and look forward to sharing some of that work here.

What are your plans this summmer?

5 Questions with Alina Sodano

Our third high school playwright is...

Alina Sodano
Bergen County Academies, Hackensack

Alina's play - Disneyland - takes place in the Disney Outlet Store in Paramus, an enchanting place that brings together two souls in need of a little magic.

1. What inspired you to write Disneyland?

I took a trip to the Disney store to buy my friend a present and I overheard two people having a job interview. The interviewer asked the interviewee who their favorite Disney character was, and the young man hesitantly responded, “Simba.” I was shocked to hear that question being asked at an interview and I thought his hesitant response was quite funny. This interview inspired me to write a Disney themed play and parts of the interview are found as dialogue in Disneyland!

2. You mentioned in your bio you enjoy taking science courses and playwriting. Do you think this makes you both left and right brained?

I think so! I like thinking both creatively and analytically.

3. Have you been to Disneyland or Disney World? If both, do you prefer one over the other? If only one, do you plan to visit the other?

I have been to Disney World in Florida before but I would love to visit Disneyland in California as well. From what I’ve heard, each theme park has a slightly different feel to it, so it would be interesting to explore both places.

4. What is your favorite book and why?

My favorite book is The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. I read it as a young girl and the book's message continues to resonate with me.

5. If you could tour with any band or singer, who would that be?

I would choose to go on tour with my new favorite band called Fun.

Disneyland will be presented with the three other winners of the High School Division of the NJ Young Playwrights Festival on Tuesday, May 22 at 7:00 p.m. Junior HS and Elementary plays will be presented on Monday, May 21. Both performances will take place at 7:00 p.m. in the University Center Little Theatre, Kean University. Tickets are free, but reservations are highly suggested (njypf@ptnj.org)

5 Questions with Emma Hathaway

We're less than a week away from the 29th annual New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival, so we thought we'd start celebrating now with a few questions with each of the high school playwrights about their work.

We start with....

Emma Hathaway
Bergen County Academies, Hackensack

Emma's play - The Mystery Madame of 110 and Broadway - is about Emily, a 20-something New Yorker who is at the Chipotle on 110 & Broadway very early in the morning wearing a wedding dress. She is preparing for her wedding, which will take place later that day. She has spent years making the arrangements for this moment save for one thing - the groom!

1. What inspired you to write The Mystery Madame of 110 and Broadway?

When I was thinking of ideas for a play, I remembered someone telling me that they had once heard of a person who planned their entire wedding day even before they had found a husband. I began to play with this idea, and combined with my love for Chipotle and eccentric personalities and the fact that I find Zumba to be hilarious, The Mystery Madame began to take shape.

2. In addition to writing, you also play violin, act, sing and dance. Are you planning a career in the arts?

While I'm not certain yet whether or not I want to pursue the arts professionally, I'm confident that they'll always be a part of my life in some way. I'm also very interested in history and literature and humanities research along those lines, but no matter what I choose in the end (choosing careers is scary!), I know I will always be singing, playing violin, and writing because that's when I'm happiest and where my heart lies.

3. Have you written other pieces other than this play? If so, what?

I wrote a play in 7th and 8th grade - both quirky comedies that I'm not sure made any real sense to anyone but myself. But after I came to high school, I didn't make as much time to write, and this play was the first full piece that I finished since freshmen year, which was really fun for me.

4. What did you enjoy most about writing this play?

My favorite part about writing this play was developing John and Emily's characters and the relationship between the two of them through their conversations. Once I had a solid grasp of each of their characters and how they interacted with each other, it was so much fun to see where their dialogue took me.

5. What is your favorite ice cream flavor?

My favorite ice cream flavor is Coconut Dream. They sell it at an ice cream shop in my town - chocolate, coconut, and almonds in vanilla ice cream. So. Good.

The Mystery Madame of 110 and Broadway will be presented with the three other winners of the High School Division of the NJ Young Playwrights Festival on Tuesday, May 22 at 7:00 p.m. Junior HS and Elementary plays will be presented on Monday, May 21. Both performances will take place at 7:00 p.m. in the University Center Little Theatre, Kean University. Tickets are free, but reservations are highly suggested (njypf@ptnj.org)

NJ Young Playwrights to speak at NYU

Tomorrow (Saturday, April 28), I will be presenting a session about the New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival at the NYU Forum on Theatre for Young Audiences.

I will be joined by three former young playwrights: Summer Dawn Hortillosa (2006), Constantine Lignos (2006), and Justine DeSilva (2010, 2011). We will be discussing their experiences in the Festival and the impact it has had on their work since. We will also consider the questions of how to share young playwrights' work with a wider audience and place of young playwrights' work within the field of theatre for young audiences (TYA).

On Sunday (April 29) at the NYU Forum, John Pietrowski, Artistic Director of Playwrights Theatre of NJ will be a panelist for a discussion about the current and future role of the writer in the theatre.

You can follow the conference through the NYU Forum's blog at http://nyutyaforum.blogspot.com/ and get more information via the website at http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/conference/tya or the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/#!/nyutyaforum.

I will also provide some updates here next week.