Seven Student Playwrights Selected: DTC's 2014-2015 Delaware Young Playwrights Festival

Post content courtesy of Delaware Theatre Company

Delaware Theatre Company is pleased to announce the six finalist plays in the 2014-2015 Delaware Young Playwrights Festival (DYPF):

• Cutting Strings by Sam Stewart, William Penn High School 
• Darkness: a Happy Sappy Extravaganza! by Dylan Lang, Cab Calloway School of the Arts 
• Ed and Coop by Hannah Biener and Charles Teague, Charter School of Wilmington 
• Letting Go by Mitali Patel, St. Elizabeth High School 
• Transcendence by Anastasia Hutnick, Padua Academy 
• The Wheel of Fortune by Anna Smith, Padua Academy 

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 February 24, 2015 at 7:30pm on the DTC stage.

This year's DYPF began with a kickoff workshop for Delaware high school teachers and students in September. From there, 41 plays written by 49 students representing eight 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 fourth 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 NORA, written by Ingmar Bergman, produced and presented by DTC in February 2015. The quotation used was, "If I ever hope to learn anything about myself and the things around me, I've got to stand completely on my own." 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.