The Milwaukee Chamber Theatre may be best known for the adults whose work they perform, but next week, Milwaukee’s youths will be thrown into the spotlight with the fifth annual Young Playwrights Festival.
The festival offers three local student playwrights a chance to collaborate with experienced theater educators and performers, and get accustomed to the inner workings of a theater, according to Jacque Troy, education director and literacy manager at the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre.
“MCT is very devoted both to education and mentoring emerging artists,” Troy said. “This program is really a perfect synergy of both of those goals.”
Plays are submitted during the year by Milwaukee high school students, and are narrowed down to a top 10 selected for further consideration. These 10 are then reviewed by an artistic committee, which selects three plays to perform and three more to receive honorable mentions.
This year, the winning plays are “You’ll Never Understand,” a play about the day-to-day lives of five high school students, “A Rose for Mrs. Kemp,” a domestic drama set in the ’40s revealing a mother’s intent for her family after her death, and “Misdirected Happiness,” which looks at a murder through the perspectives of both the suspects and investigators. The plays were written by Emlyn Dornemann, a senior at Montessori IB High School; Melody Hardman, a senior from Rufus King IB High School; and Alyssa Cumpton, a recent graduate of Homestead High School, respectively.
Other than an age restriction that limits the competition to students in high school prior to the June 1 deadline, there are no limits on what sort of stories can be told, and students can audition actors of any age, either professional or not, to create a more realistic setting for the plays.
Once chosen, Troy said, the playwrights go through workshops to help develop their budding careers and focus on perfecting the creation of one-act plays.
“I focus on helping them to think creatively, develop characters and plot and finally communicate their story through dialogue,” Troy said.
From there, how much the playwrights want to participate in the creation process is completely up to them.
“This year, two came to auditions and those same two are also attending rehearsals when their schedules allow,” Troy said. “During the four showcase performances, the available playwrights are a huge part of the talk-backs that follow each.”
The actual shows themselves incorporate locals as well. Each cast features actors from the Milwaukee area, and the technology and design teams working on the shows have students from both University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Cardinal Stritch University involved.
Troy said the overall hope is to get teens involved with writing, especially focusing on the inner workings of adolescents, and encourage them to use their everyday life experiences. The festival not only gets young playwrights interested in pursuing writing but also guides them in the direction they need to be aimed to make that writing successful.
“The Young Playwrights Festival is the perfect gateway project for emerging artists. From their participation in this, we’ve had actors, directors, technicians and designers go on to work in our mainstage productions,” Troy said. “The Young Playwrights Festival was the chance for them to really show what they could do, and believe me, we all pay attention!”
The Young Playwrights Festival will take place March 17 to 20 at the Broadway Theatre Center’s Studio Theatre, 158 N. Broadway St. All three plays will be performed each night. Tickets are $10 for students, seniors and MCT subscribers, and $15 for adults. To purchase tickets, call (414) 291-7800.
