One of the most important things that students discover through writing their own plays is that they can make people pay attention by the way they use words.  Through writing exercises in class, students discover what makes them pay attention, what keeps them interested. They find ideas they keep coming back to, characters that they want to spend time with. They find different ways to create character, plot, learn techniques to shape scenes, and practice giving constructive feedback to one another.  Though each student works on his or her individual play, as soon as students read aloud on each other’s scenes, they understand that a play is not just the writer and the words, they realize that creating a play is a collaboration. The writers words must be said out loud by actors, their words will be heard by an audience.  In the creation of their plays, students help each other.  They listen to each other in new ways.

Writing a play not only allows students to express what they feel, but also allows them to step into another person”s point of view, to imagine how someone unlike themselves may feel.  Stimulating the imagination into finding empathy, then allowing that empathic voice to be shared in front of a live audience is a very heady thing. To some students, having their plays directed by professional directors, performed by professional actors, in front of a live audience in a real theatre, is a life-changing event.  For student playwrights to have the experience of rapt attention to their words, to have an audience laugh when the writer wanted them to laugh, to feel sad when the writer wanted them to feel sad, to think when the writer wanted them to think, are gifts of empowerment and confidence.

Being able to experience how students perceive the world around them is also a gift.  Theatre professionals who work on the Young California Writers Project appreciate that they are being given a glimpse of life through a young writer’s eyes and each glimpse is unique, fresh, and informative.  Not only does the audience get to see a bit of the future through the plays of these young writers, but those of us who work on them have a lot of fun as well.

Cherylene Lee
Teaching artist