Finalists Announced for 2013-14 Delaware Young Playwrights Festival at DTC

Delaware Theatre Company has announced the six finalist plays in the 2013-2014 Delaware Young Playwrights Festival!

The Diner by Saryu Chennat, Cab Calloway School of the Arts
Breaking Glass by Nikolas Hunter, St. Elizabeth High School
The Intruder in Apartment 4B by Lily Kairis, Charter School of Wilmington
The Coffee Stag by Veronika Lynch and Darian Sorouri, Cab Calloway School of the Arts
Getting to Know Your Conscience by Rebecca Oberschmidt, Charter School of Wilmington
To Break the Ice by Sam Stewart, William Penn High School

These six plays by seven playwrights were selected as finalists in the 2013-2014 Delaware Young Playwrights Festival (DYPF). The finalists will participate in a series of playwriting workshops with professional theatre artists from Delaware Theatre Company to further refine their writing and ready their works for a public showcase performance on March 11, 2014 on the DTC stage.

This year's DYPF began with a kickoff workshop for Delaware high school teachers and students in September. From there, 58 plays written by 101 students representing seven different Delaware high schools were submitted for the first round. Each playwright received personal feedback about his or her play from a teaching artist of the Delaware Theatre Company staff. Student playwrights had the opportunity to revise their plays. Participating schools were then invited to resubmit their top five plays for the second round, also known as the "competition round." From these entries, the six finalist plays were selected for additional development under the guidance of Delaware Theatre Company's team of theatre artists and educators.

Now in its third year of the relaunch of this acclaimed program, DYPF invites high school students to write a play based on a theme inspired by one of Delaware Theatre Company's productions. This year's theme was inspired by a quotation from The Story of My Life, music and lyrics by Neil Bartram, and book by Brian Hill, produced and presented by DTC in December of 2013. The quotation used was, "It might seem small to you, but you change the world with everything you do." Students were challenged to write a play in which a character or characters discover that their choices or behaviors contribute to a change in their own lives or in their community. Through the use of a standards-based writing rubric, students created and shaped their original plays with regard to characters, conflict, dialogue, theme, and other dramatic criteria. Delaware Theatre Company celebrates the work of all 101 students in adding 58 new plays to the world of theatre through their participation in the 2013-2014 Delaware Young Playwrights Festival.

The mission of Delaware Theatre Company's DYPF is to provide students with an authentic audience for their creative writing and teachers with an innovative literacy program. Guided by passion and professionalism, DYPF uses educational resources, interactive workshops, personal feedback to every playwright, and public performances to engage students in the art of theatre through the act of writing a play. Both competitive and cooperative, DYPF fosters, respects, and celebrates the voices of young writers.

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