Five Student Playwrights Honored as Finalists in Playwriting Competition at Delaware Theatre Company

Delaware Theatre Company has announced the five winning plays in the 2022-2023 Delaware Young Playwrights Festival!

• The Ladder Escape by Morgan Baker of William Penn High School
• Happy New Day by Danielle Chapman of St. Elizabeth High School
• Football Practice by Mackenzie Lane of Charter School of Wilmington
• Hope Prevails by Lauren MacAllister of St. Elizabeth High School
• One of Us by Jane Oommen of Charter School of Wilmington

The playwrights will be honored at a public showcase performance of their plays, or scenes from those plays, on Thursday, March 2, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. on the Delaware Theatre Company stage.

The playwrights of these five plays were selected in January as finalists in the 2022-2023 Delaware Young Playwrights Festival (DYPF). They participated in a series of playwriting workshops through the month with professional theatre artists from Delaware Theatre Company to further refine their writing. Having completed their work and met high standards of achievement in writing, these playwrights are being honored for their winning plays at the DYPF Recognition Night on March 2, 2023. The work presented that evening from these winning plays will feature the talents of professional actors, directors, designers, and technicians from Delaware Theatre Company bringing to life the words crafted by the student playwrights. In addition, DTC will recognize five additional playwrights who received honorable mentions for their plays and acknowledge all of the 64 playwrights from nine schools from throughout Delaware who entered plays into DYPF. The event is free and open to the public.

This year's DYPF began in September with a kickoff workshop for Delaware teachers and students in grades 8-12. From there, 58 plays written by 64 students representing nine different schools from across the state 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. Playwrights then resubmitted their work for the second round, also known as the "competition round." From these entries, the five finalist plays were selected for additional development under the guidance of Delaware Theatre Company's team of theatre artists and educators. This development took place during the series of playwriting workshops, leading to the culminating performance March 2.

Though not selected as finalists, five other plays and their playwrights are recognized with an honorable mention for the merits of their work. They are Lifting Up Others by Spencer Camlin of Sussex Central High School; Reconnected by Emily Howard of Charter School of Wilmington; Shattered Spirals by Sayuri Karnik of MOT Charter High School; The Haunted Christmas by Alexia Nadel of Cab Calloway School of the Arts; and Jammed by Felicia Vitelli of St. Elizabeth High School. DTC congratulates these playwrights and invites them, along with all of this year's playwrights, to the awards recognition night and showcase of finalist plays on March 2nd.

DYPF invites students in grades 8-12 to write a play based on a theme inspired by one of Delaware Theatre Company's productions. This year's theme was inspired by this quotation from Layon Gray's play Black Angels Over Tuskegee: "We all want to succeed. That's why we are here." Gray's play, which tells the story of Black American men who served in the lauded Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, examines the premise that each of these men was an individual with different life experiences; different perspectives on education, leadership, and the Black experience; and different choices on how each worked towards his goals. However, these unique individuals--though diverse in many ways--found commonality in a shared goal of success as Airmen in the war, and found that success through mutual commitment to a greater cause. This quotation served as a springboard for the DYPF theme: Write a play in which a character or characters learn that success in a challenging endeavor calls for a united effort from different individuals. 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 64 students in adding 58 new plays to the world of theatre through their participation in the 2022-2023 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.

The Delaware Young Playwrights Festival is made possible, in part, by support from Delaware Humanities, the Chichester duPont Foundation, and the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. The Division promotes Delaware arts events on www.DelawareScene.com.

To post a comment, you must register and login.