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| Descriptions by Alessandra Haley, Weston High School (Jacob Strautmann and Heather Houston)l |
Here's how the program works:
Every year Kate Snodgrass hooks local playwrights (many of whom are our alumni) with area high schools for the New Noises: Massachusetts Young Playwrights' Project. The playwright visits the classroom to teach playwriting, supplementing what the students are already learning, and then she follows up with the development of those plays over email. Finally, the plays are chosen by the classroom teacher and submitted for the two-day festival.
The Festival goes like this:
Over two days (it will be expanding to three next year!), half of the students who had a play submitted will have their plays read on the fly by professional actors and discussed among the 60 students sharing the experience. The other students (about ten a day) have their works blocked, rehearsed, and discussed by Boston directors and actors. Those plays are then performed for the larger crowd. The students get their hands on stagecraft, some of them for the first time, and nearly all of them have their first theatre experience from the playwright's perspective. (Cue our blog's intro music.)
