When I was a student in Washington High School in San Francisco, I took a writing class. It was short fiction, not playwriting, but it gave me a chance to explore my imagination, and create a vision of the world with my own voice. At the end of the semester the teacher told me my style reminded him of Hawthorne, and that I had the talent to make a living writing. I was thrilled! I pictured myself years later, smoking jacket and pipe, penning stories that explained the mysteries of the human soul, using my talent to make the world a better place.

But after graduation, I was at a loss: where to go with my writing? Submit to magazines? Contests? Stand shivering at the Powell Street BART Station, handing out short stories like a religious zealot? There was no road map, no mentor to show me a way to reach my smoking jacket/pipe goal. Nothing in school had prepared me for either the reality of being a writer, or given me any practical experience.

The Young California Writers Project does all that and more. It gives the young writers a professional mentor who helps shepherd them through the process of finding their particular voice, and validates their using that voice to tell a story that only they can tell. It teaches them freedom of expression, and the responsibility of that freedom. It provides a universe boundless as the students mind, and a deadline that has a put up or shut up date that discourages braggadocio.

But more importantly writing, and especially playwriting, puts these young writers in someone else’s mind. It instills and cultivates empathy in a generation that are shown by example everyday that the needs of others are to be ignored, and weaknesses exploited and ridiculed. Instead each character stops being the “other”. The cruel, abusive parent becomes a frightened, powerless victim lashing out. The unresponsive teacher becomes the overworked cog in a machine, and a potential victim who’s asking for it becomes a person trying to feed a family. Each character must be understood, however much the writer may disagree with the character.

And the final production, staged and performed by theatre professionals, not only validates the students as artists and their issues as worthy of attention, seeing the characters they created made real empowers them as empathetic people. Once they learn to see the world through someone else’s eyes, it’s harder to objectify classmates, friends, or enemies.

Whether it’s Reality TV teammates stabbing each other in the back, dysfunctional talk show guests judged by a cruel audience, or watching their school crumble around them as funding for their district is slashed to balance corporate tax cuts, these students have ample reason to become the dog eat dog berserkers we fear will prey on us in the future. It is through programs like the Young California Writers Project they can learn to explore their talents, see themselves as artists contributing to an organization that values them, and become the sort of empathetic citizens a civil society needs.

And if they never get smoking jackets and pipes, that’s okay.

Michael Gene Sullivan
Teaching Artist