I Heart Stairway to Heaven

When I teach playwriting classes to high school students, one of my favorite plays to share with them is Gregory Fletcher’s Stairway to Heaven, which won the 2004 National Ten-Minute Play Award at the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival.

Students connect to the play – about two teenaged siblings on the morning of their father’s funeral – because the characters are instantly familiar (and their interaction so real) to them. The play’s dialogue is simple, but layered; its structure is very clear; it is funny, sad, sweet, and true – a terrific play to talk about with first-time playwrights. My group at the Academy of the Pacific Rim in Hyde Park, where I am mentoring students for the Massachusetts Young Playwrights’ Project this year, is no exception. They loved it. [Random suggestion: I also like pairing this play with Walt McGough’s Two Socks Discuss Loss, to show students two very different ways of illustrating onstage the ways we move through grief and into the future. Steal this idea!]

Gambatte

This year I am mentoring students at the Academy of the Pacific Rim in Hyde Park, as part of the Massachusetts Young Playwrights’ Project. The poster above hangs in the school’s lobby; its community's guiding philosophy sets high standards for discipline, creativity, and diversity, and rewards effort and perseverance. What a terrific (the only?!) mindset for playwrights. Can’t wait to see the work that results from this group!

New Noises: Massachusetts Young Playwrights' Project and Festival

Two weeks ago 45 Boston actors and directors had an incredible two days at Boston Playwrights' Theatre.  I had the good luck to be amongst them.   And so did ten area high schools...

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.)

Behind the scenes at MYPP

How do you write a ten-minute play? Or, more succinctly, how do you teach others to write a ten-minute play?

I’m not sure there’s a single correct answer to that, but since I promised to post an update about the students at Walnut Hill participating in the Massachusetts Young Playwrights' Project (MYPP), I figure it may be fun to pull back the curtain a bit to what goes on behind the scenes.

Ten-minute plays are full-length plays in microcosm: They should have a beginning, middle, and end; relatable characters; metaphor. I’m not ashamed to say that I love them. Short plays allow me to experiment, take risks, and just plain ol’ have fun. But speaking of fun, I digress:

The whole experience began with a meeting between Allan Reeder (Walnut Hill’s Director of Writing & Publishing) and me. He told me about the students, what their writing is like [many already have written plays, under the guidance of none other than our own Ronan Noone, who is on staff there – BIG shout-out to Ronan here, whose students are great], the kinds of projects they generally take on, etc. Allan told me that he likes providing specific frameworks for the projects he gives his students; and, while there are a few experienced playwrights in this group of twelve, most focus on poetry or fiction and would be writing plays for the first time.

They had me at ‘hello’...

...literally. On Monday, I walked into the studio classroom where our workshop was to take place, and there it was on the white board:

An anagram of my crazy name – brilliant. In an instant I could tell these were my kind of folks. My peeps.

The Massachusetts Young Playwrights' Project brings together playwrights and student writers, and this year I am mentoring twelve of Allan Reeder’s high school students at Walnut Hill School in Natick. The students (many of whom have never written a play before) will write their own 10-minute plays over the next month or so. I’ll visit the school a couple of times -- when we will read and discuss their work together -- and keep in touch with them via e-mail as they revise their work.

Walnut Hill is one of a dozen or so schools in the Boston metro participating in the program, which culminates in the New Noises Festival at BPT in April. Read more details about this innovative program here.

I had a terrific time learning a bit about everyone and having a first listen to the students’ work, and I think they enjoyed it too: A few of them have e-mailed me already with new ideas and revisions of their plays! Watch this space for more on my adventures at Lawn Nut Ill! (Okay, yeah, maybe I can help them with their plays a little, and they can give me a serious education on anagram creation…)

More soon.