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Write On! (Our Creative Arts Academy Newsletter)

Write On!
News from the Education Department at Playwrights Theatre

Vol. 6, May 2006

DEAD WHITE GUYS INVADE HIGH SCHOOLS THROUGHOUT JERSEY!

An artist's insights on NJ's Poetry Out Loud Residency Program '05-'06

Writer Anndee Hochman has been an artist-in-the-schools since 1992. She teaches both prose and poetry for the New Jersey Writers Project. The Poetry Out Loud Residency program was piloted in 2006 at seven schools as a partnership with the NJ State Council on the Arts as part of Poetry Out Loud National Recitation Contest an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. For '06-'07' POL will go statewide and encourage all NJ highschools to participate and the residency program will expand to ten schools across the State.

When I became involved with Poetry Out Loud, I found myself having an interesting internal argument—which ended with me taking the unfamiliar position of defending the Western literary canon. As someone who treasures diversity, and whose personal taste in poetry runs toward the likes of Naomi Shihab Nye and Pablo Neruda, I’m not in the habit of standing up for what we sometimes call “the dead white guys.”

I remember browsing the anthology’s table of contents: Coleridge, Keats, Wordsworth. Where were the strong female voices? Where were the edgy urban rhythms that would speak to high school kids? Then I began actually reading the poems. And I quickly realized that I couldn’t dismiss the dead white guys, nor could I make assumptions about the students who would be taking them to heart. Who was to say that an African-American teenager in Trenton wouldn’t identify with the grief and longing in a Shakespearean sonnet, or that a white kid from South Jersey wouldn’t know exactly what Paul Laurence Dunbar meant when he wrote “We Wear the Mask”?

Part of the point of Poetry Out Loud, as I saw it, was that these poems were not locked chambers, open only to a select few—they belong to all of us, and anyone with curiosity and persistence can enter one and call it home. That’s what I hoped would happen. That’s what I told students in Trenton and Glassboro on my first day of teaching. I hoped they would browse the book and website until they found a poem that poked them, one they kept turning back to, one that seemed to have been written just for them. And then they would enter that poem, learn it by heart and breath and body. Together, that student and Sir Walter Raleigh, or this student and Lucille Clifton, would say something important to the rest of us.

When we began, the poems were just words on a page. We stood in a circle and recited W.H. Auden’s “The More Loving One.” In groups, students performed “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. They read “We Wear the Mask” and wrote their own heart-breaking poems about the need to hide who you really are. We read “Chicago” by Carl Sandburg, then wrote collaborative pieces about Trenton and Glassboro, bringing those places to life with metaphor and personification. Meanwhile, each student was choosing a poem and learning to read between its lines.

At Glassboro, a sophomore boy chose Rupert Brooke’s “1914” because he had a relative who had fought for the English in World War II. A quiet girl picked Edgar Allan Poe’s “Alone” because it captured her own feeling of being different. Students memorized classics by Dickinson and Frost as well as recent pieces by Amy Uyematsu, Li-Young Lee and Mark Strand.

Sometimes I think being an educator is mostly about creating an atmosphere in which everyone—students and teacher—can surprise themselves. Here was my final surprise: on the students’ evaluations, the most frequent comment was about how much they’d learned from each other.

“I saw how much my classmates had in them…I never knew my peers were so talented…I feel like I know my friends better now.”

One student will be declared the winner today, but every participant in Poetry Out Loud—teaching artists included—has already taken home a prize. These poems remind us of how much we all contain.

TWEAKING AND NUDGING YOUNG WRITERS TOWARDS EXCELLENCE

The revival of the New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival: Reflections from past contest winners

Plays are written to be performed, and no play has truly succeeded unless it has existed in some shape or form on stage," pronounces Travis Baker, 2003 Winner of the NJ Young Playwrights Contest - High School Division. After a five-year hiatus, winning playwrights in the annual Contest (NJYPC) sponsored by Playwrights Theatre experienced their work being performed by professional actors before a public audience. On May 15 and 16, 2006, the New Jersey Young Playwrights Festival presented four plays from each of the Elementary, Junior HS, and High School Divisions at the Wilkins Theatre on the campus of Kean University in Union, NJ. The Festival was made possible by a partnership between Playwrights Theatre and Premiere Stages @ Kean University.

The Festival's revival was sparked by a need to provide young writers an opportunity to share their ideas and thoughts with the public. "Young people must be encouraged to raise their voices. The world needs it," Jim DeVivo, Playwrights Theatre's Associate Director of Education says. "Reviving the Festival is an exciting project as it not only gives audience to thirteen young voices in New Jersey, but also encourages an entire generation to be expressive. Hopefully, this provides a forum for young people (and their families) to think and dialogue about these unique and bold views of the world and to begin constructing their own ideas and visions."

This goal is an extension of the encouragement already going on in homes around New Jersey. For the most part, the young authors recognized through the NJYPC are the products of a supportive and stimulating home. "My parents have always encouraged my writing," says Alec Strum, 2002 Winner - High School Division. Adam Hunter, 1999 Winner - High School Division adds, "(My parents have) been my strongest supporters throughout my life. My teachers throughout the years have always had positive feedback, and helped me to hone my craft."

"The critiques were the best part of the contest. That’s why I was so adamant about sending as much material as possible, I knew that even if the play was pure garbage I’d get a measured, objective opinion from a caring educator/professional. Every day I’d run to the mail box to see if another update or critique had come," says Travis Baker. Developing the young writers' craft is the focus of the Contest and Festival. Each playwright who submits a script to the Contest receives two written critiques from professional theatre artists. This feedback is designed to encourage the playwright and offers questions, ideas, or tools for the students' use as they continue to write and develop their voice. These critiques often become the real prize for each playwright involved. "The critiques, as I recall them, were awesome. They were extremely useful for my later work, and I was grateful to receive them. It was an important lesson for me to learn that even when a play is deemed 'good,' there is still much work left to do. The fact that a winning play still receives critiques and analysis is a great illustration of the creative process as a whole: even when you’re done, you’re not done. And even when the audience is happy, there’s still some tweaking and nudging that could take place," states Manoah Finston, a 2002 High School Division Winner for his play, I, Time Bomb.

Many young playwrights have gone on to pursue writing in college or as a career. Travis Baker is in Hollywood making a go at becoming a screenwriter. He has seen one of his plays produced Off-Broadway and others performed in Hollywood. Alec Strum is currently a double major in theatre and literary studies at Middlebury College in Vermont. In April, Alec performed in a production at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Washington, DC. This summer he will perform with the Potomac Theatre Project at the Olney Theatre in Maryland. His play, Big Bad, a script for young actors, will be published by Pioneer Drama Service this summer. This past year's High School Division Winner Katie Hathaway, also saw her play, At the Tree Line awarded a prize of $400 by The National Society of Arts and Letters: NJ Chapter.

Other NJ Young Playwrights have seen success in venues outside the theatre. In her freshman year at Bucknell University, Chrissy Friedlander won Bucknell's Stadler Center / West Branch Literary Prize in Creative Fiction for her short story "Portrait of the Artist as a Catholic School Dropout." Adam Hunter is a writer/editor for Guideposts magazine and a freelance writer for MSNBC.

Submissions to the 24th annual New Jersey Young Playwrights Contest will be accepted up until the postmark deadline of January 12, 2007. Young playwrights (and teachers) interested in submitting scripts to the Contest can visit the Playwrights Theatre website in October for updated submission guidelines. Former Contest winners have offered advice to all young writers no matter what genre:

"Don’t be afraid to go back to doodling if you can’t write or type fast enough to keep up with your thoughts. I’m almost nineteen and still do that! It’s more important to have the story, settings, and characters clear in your mind than to have something coherently written, but not what you want, in your first draft(s)." – Annie Humphrey, 2001 winner - Junior HS Division.

"Read. Read a lot. Read some classic works. Read some modern works. Read novels. Read plays. Read poetry. Read the newspaper. Develop a feel for their style, and from a strong literary foundation, forge your own unique style." – Chrissy Friedlander.

"The world craves stories and therefore needs storytellers. Tell the stories that you want to hear, not the ones you think people want to hear. Have fun with it, live out your dreams and fantasies, scare people, shock people, make them laugh or make them cry, just…go with it. See what happens." – Travis Baker

The winners of the 2006 New Jersey Young Playwrights Contest/Festival (listed in no particular order) were:

High School Division

Swan Song by Brittany Wallace, grade 11, River Dell Regional HS, Oradell

Thirty Years Later by Bonnie Torre, grade 11, Bergen County Academies, Hackensack

At the Tree Line, by Katie Hathaway, grade 12, Rutherford HS

They Don't Exist by Megan O'Brien, grade 11, High Tech HS, North Bergen

Junior HS Division

Double Take by Emma Strickler and Juliana Brunini, grade 8, Millburn MS

It's in His Genes by George Edinger, grade 8, Columbia MS, Berkeley Heights

The Trend Cycle by Morgan Lochhead, grade 8, William Annin MS, Basking Ridge

Two Dry Pieces of Rye, One Scrambled Egg, and Coffee by Nicholas Sousa, grade 8, Columbia MS, Berkeley Heights

Elementary School Division

The Gingerbread Mystery by River Galloway, grade 5, Brookside Place School, Cranford

Waking Beast by Angela Yu, grade 6, Mount Pleasant MS, Livingston

Turtle Trouble by Adam Vincent, grade 6, St. Vincent Martyr School, Madison

Holiday Adventures by Brigid McDonald, grade 6, Mount Pleasant MS, Livingston

A Vampire Accountant And some Little Women TakE OVER THE STAGE!

The Creative Arts Academy gives young actors experience in mounting plays

Playwrights Theatre's Creative Arts Academy offers theatre arts and writing classes to children, teens and adults throughout the year at our theatre in Madison.

After numerous requests from students and parents, the Creative Arts Academy added the Six-Week Play and the summer version, Two-Week Play to its roster of classes. Since it began last fall, elementary through high school students have had the opportunity to work on a short play from casting the parts, to the public performance with costumes and lights. Students have done original plays written by PTNJ students including The Day Jennifer Lou Ellen Mississippi Kerbunkle Changed Her Life, and Mr. Walker...Vampire Accountant, but have also performed scenes and monologues from published pieces including How to Eat Like a Child and Little Women.

The Six-Week Play gives students an opportunity to put their theatre skills and talent into practice. For six weeks, two times per week, students work with a professional teaching artist/director to adapt, rehearse, and mount an original one-act play. Through this process students learn rehearsal skills (memorization, blocking and stagecraft), character development, and group collaboration. Tim Artz, who directed numerous Six Week Play performances, is a veteran actor whose recent credits include: a role in the film The Manchurian Candidate with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep, a featured role on Law and Order Criminal Intent, and a reoccurring role as The Drifter on the Guiding Light. He holds a BA from Point Park College in Pittsburgh and has an MFA in Acting from Rutgers University. He has been working with Playwrights Theatre since 2004.

The Six Week Play class has also given us a forum to showcase the original writing by PTNJ students. Bernadette Bizer, a three-time New Jersey Young Playwrights Contest winner, wrote two plays performed by the classes of the plays, Tim, the director said, "Bernadette is one talented writer. Her plays are fun, well constructed, and original. She creates great plots and characters, just perfect for my young actors to perform”. The New Jersey Young Playwrights Contest, which is administered by Playwrights Theatre is now in its 22^nd year and receives approximately 500 entries annually from across the state. The submission deadline for this year's contest is January 12, 2007 for students in grades 4-12.

Of the class, Brittany Parrish of Rockaway said, " this class is really fun because I want to be an actress when I grow up, and I am learning so much. Tim is an actual actor and I learn the same techniques he has learned as an actor and that's something I haven't experienced anywhere else". Of her experience in our classes, Erika Skorstad of Springfield (a four time Six and Two-Week Play actress) exclaims," I've done plays before, they are usually fairytales but this play is a realistic story. I relate to it more and I feel like I'm doing professional theatre.” Jennifer Allocco of Chatham commented, "I like attending class two times a week because there is still time during the week to do other things but I have two designated days per week full of fun."

Students can enroll for our spring sessions of the Six-Week Play class which begin in January and then again in April. You can contact the Education Department at 973.514.1787 ext. 21 or visit us online at www.ptnj.org.

FROM THE PAGE TO THE STAGE

Reflections of a playwright's experience learning the art of being a teaching artist

Playwright and actress Dania Ramos began with Playwrights in 2000 as an actress in our Language-in-Motion assemblies, which have a team of professional actors perform plays written by students for the school community. She then began assistant teaching a playwriting class for children and is now a lead teacher in the Cranford Young Playwrights Program (CYPP). This 12-week after school program teaches playwriting to students grades 3- 8 at four elementary school in Cranford.

Over the past few years, I’ve had the honor of being involved with the Cranford Young Playwrights Program in various capacities. My first teaching assignment came in the fall of 2003, when I served as the assistant for Carolyn Hunt at Brookside Place School. It was through this experience that I was introduced to many of the ‘secrets’ that make for a successful playwriting residency. I have continued to incorporate many of these methods into my lesson plans since becoming lead teacher for the Orange Avenue School program two years ago.

This past fall I was partnered with Duayne Maynard at Orange Avenue. I had performed with Duayne in Language-in-Motion assemblies before, but joining forces to teach a twelve-week residency was a different story. Fortunately, we were able to meld our styles from day one and working together offstage was an easy transition to make. I must admit that having two teachers in the classroom offers a unique type of validation. I loved the discussions Duayne and I were able to have about what happened in class, and it was satisfying to share a smile with one another whenever a student had a breakthrough.

By the midway point of the residency, the Orange Avenue students were genuinely invested in each others work as well as their own. But then, I find this to be true with each group of students in the Cranford Playwriting Program. Why? I believe it’s due to the fact the students gain a true sense of what it takes to create ‘the magic’ of theatre: a team of artists, each with their own important role. In being handed the responsibility of the most vital job as playwrights, the students understand first hand the necessity of collaboration. There’s plenty that the playwright must do on their own, but a play cannot reach its intended form without the help of many others along the way.

Participation in a Playwrights Theatre residency offers the students an opportunity to meet a number of professionals in the world of theatre. Of course, the teaching artists that conduct the residencies are the ones that the students are seeing and learning from the most. There’s no denying that the lead and assistant teachers grow an essential trust with the students during the writing process. However, it is the additional exposure to actors and a director during the assembly presentation and even classroom visits from administrative staff from Playwrights Theatre that ensures that these students know what it takes to get a script from the page to the stage. From writing to photocopying; from casting to performing and so forth—it takes a team.

Here, here, here… the writing process is THE healing process

An artist shares her experiences at Woodrow Wilson High School (Camden Writers Project)

Poet Therése Halscheid has taught full-time in the USA for 13 years, as well as overseas in Russia and England. Therése was awarded a 2003 Fellowship for Poetry from New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Without Home (2001) and Powertalk (1995). Twice her poems were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She travels widely, and many ideas for writing come from these experiences.

For 4 years, I have participated in the NJ State Council on the Arts - Camden Project. This project receives a special grant that allows a visiting writer to work 6 days in a Camden school. The school I have always been paired with is Woodrow Wilson High. Following the residency, selected poems from each class are sent to Playwrights Theatre where poems are typed and compiled into an anthology. Actors from the theatre thread the poems together and perform them in an assembly at Woodrow Wilson in late spring.

The residency at Woodrow is unlike any other residency I have been given by the Council. Situated in a rough neighborhood, known as the hood, signs of caution are apparent before entering the classrooms. One must walk under a wand to be granted entrance. My backpack is placed on a conveyor belt, its contents scanned. Police officers patrol the hallways. And once in the classroom, the caution continues. Though, it is reluctance of a different nature… In the beginning hours, the first day, one can feel the students’ watchfulness. Their cautioning eyes speak of it. My questions are followed by long pauses. The odd silences are, at first, surprising. What are they thinking? I ask myself.

I now know to think of it as the trust-making part of the residency, a time when I just allow, when I do not challenge their silences, when I dignify any answer that is given. The trust-making part of the residency is a time when students need to learn that I am not there to judge what they give voice to – in written or spoken language. Although awkward, it is an intricate part of the residency. It is a time of permission. A time when they are learning they are in a safe space where they can let go to write.

By mid-residency, we start to let go to write. What I mean is ─ although we have been writing all along, each day ─ by mid-residency, poems seem to surface from a deeper place. I call this the art-making part of the residency. A time where they meet their inner voice, and have the courage to surface it to paper.

The room is quiet still, but offers a different hush. One can feel a new energy meeting the air. It is as if a zone forms where time falls away, and all their self-consciousness disappears, and all their thoughts of being wrong or right diminishes, and they are experiencing a hidden world inside of them. A voice that may be different from daily talk.

Although my intent during the residency is not aimed toward cathartic experiences, some of our most moving moments come from poetry that reflects the dark parts of their lives. I am thinking now, of a time when we were exploring the list poem, Here, by the poet Arthur Sze, a poem where each line begins with Here … where each image unveils something about a mysterious place. While discussing the poem, in the back of the room, a student began writing. I made no mention about it, but my eyes would travel to that student now and again, as the class and I talked through Arthur’s poem and then launched into our own poems of place. Once everyone was engaged, I walked to the back of the room to see what she had been writing. She was on page 3 by this time, unleashing unthinkable incidents onto paper, each image a line of her life, all the stored horror revealing itself with each here, here, here….

Unknown to me, this was a student who had not written one word the entire semester. It was a transformative time not only for the student, but also for her teacher who now had insights. Healing continued the following day, as the student chose to read her poem aloud, and was supported by her peers. A copy of the poem was also given to a guidance counselor who was working with her. What she could not disclose through spoken language, she revealed through poetic language and we all felt it … the transformative power of poetry. The moment was groundbreaking!

Likewise, there are moments during the residency where we slow down time and take note of daily acts. I may use Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Daily” or other poems that call attention to what typically goes unnoticed. This too, I find meaningful for the students. Meaningful in the way that they call attention to the simple, calm moments within their harsh existence, begin to see a speck of loveliness working its way through the hard streets. Poems of daily acts bring softness to street life, brings reverence to the smile of a passerby, the touch from a grandmother’s wrinkled hand, a shaft of light leaking through an old shed. It allows students to open their eyes to some meaningful gesture or movement in their world, a coping mechanism perhaps, or a changed perspective … awakened through a moment of poetry.

There are many other experiences that offer revelation. There is a Carl Sandburg poem, called “Young Sea” where I darken the room and have them close their eyes. Using guided imagery, with a backdrop of taped ocean sounds, I take them to the sea in their minds and place their feet in the sands and have them sense their surroundings. Initially, I hesitated to offer this experience, because the experience seemed too soft, the guided imagery with ocean sounds, so very foreign to them. But actually, the teacher wanted more of it. She shared that her students were not used to this kind of experience, but likened it to an opportunity to soften their hardened shells. Metaphorically, the experience did seem like shells from the sea. We crawled out from our tough exteriors, away from city life, and stood upon serene sands. We learned how a writer writes of places outside of themselves, without leaving their seats. It was also surprising that some had to invent their own seascape, as they had never been to the Jersey shore.

The final days, I call the ah-ha part of the residency. Certainly, students come away with poems in their pockets. But inside each poem, is a voice awakened. And in each awakened voice, is the experience of what it felt like to let go and write from the inside, out...Once out, language is dignified in that their own written words were honored when spoken. The power of poetry is evident. You know it when you see the change in their eyes, their lips tilting upward, the pen going, and the thank you on the last day.

You know it when you see how anxious they are to receive their anthologies and run down the halls with it, waving the book in their hands, showing their peers their poetry. You know it by the applause when their poems move from the page to the stage, are given life beyond paper. When they say to you long after the residency is over, late spring … that they are still writing.

ARTISTS CORNER
Exciting News from Playwrights Theatre’s Teaching Artists

From book releases to upcoming performances, Playwrights Theatre’s Teaching Artists are doing some exciting work in the literary and performing arts. Playwrights Theatre prides itself in working with professional artists who not only are passionate about teaching the art form, but who are also active participants in the current art and literary scenes, writing books, presenting at poetry readings, and performing in shows in the New York/New Jersey area. Click here for more information on the most current work being done by our artists including playwright Dominique Cieri, poet and performer Lamont Dixon, and actor Natasha Yannacañedo, just to name a few.