Young Playwrights Festival Winners

The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center has announced selections for the 13th annual Young Playwrights Festival. A world-renowned developer of new work and new artists for the American theater, the O’Neill is the winner of two Tony Awards and National Medal of Arts. Employing the signature “O’Neill process,” the festival provides professional support to develop original one-act plays written by middle and high school students (age 12-18).

Selected from 208 nationwide entries, the five student playwrights, who will work collaboratively with a professional creative team to breathe life into each play, include:

Unseen by Madelyn Beaudoin Old Saybrook Middle School, CT
Infallia by Jordan Bordner Waterford High School, CT
Schrödinger's Wife by Maurielle Mcgarvey High School for Performing & Visual Arts, TX
How to Make a Women's Advocate by Taylor Roy Clark Lane Middle School, CT
Places To Go, People to Be by Jesse Zieminski Fitch High School, CT

Additionally, 16 young playwrights were selected to participate in the Guest Playwright Observation program.

The festival culminates with a public presentation featuring script-in-hand performances of each student's work Sunday, May 13 at 5pm -- this year in a new location -- at Connecticut College's Evans Hall within the Cumming Arts Center complex. The presentation is free and open to the public.

“It’s been another record-breaking year in terms of submissions and we are so pleased that more and more students are writing and submitting to YPF,” remarked Young Playwrights Festival Director Sophia Chapadjiev. “Our five selected playwrights are exploring a broad range of ideas, which cover historical characters and situations; a variety of worlds – both real and imagined; characters in conflict; and coming-of-age tales. The ensemble of 30+ actors, directors, designers, dramaturges and mentors - comprised of National Theater Institute alumni – and I are looking forward to serving our young playwrights’ works.” Chapadjiev, a playwright herself, has had her own work produced in the U.S. and internationally.

Funding for the Young Playwrights Festival program is provided by Community Foundation of Eastern CT, Connecticut Automotive Retailers Association Foundation, Bodenwein Public Benevolent Foundation, and Waterford Education Foundation.

***

About the Young Playwrights Festival: In addition to a semester-long, in-school playwriting program, selected middle and high school students are given the opportunity to spend a weekend at the O’Neill with a dedicated creative team of National Theater Institute alumni - director, dramaturg, and actors - helping them to stage their original one act plays. The development process draws on principles and techniques used during the O’Neill’s renowned National Playwrights Conference. With these methods, the students hone their work, furthering it from the initial isolation of writing to the collaborative process involved in making their script into a living, breathing play. For more information on the Young Playwrights Festival, visit www.theoneill.org or e-mail Sophia Chapadjiev, Festival Director, at sophia@theoneill.org.

About the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center: Founded in 1964, the O’Neill is the country’s preeminent organization dedicated to the development of new works and new voices for the American theater, and named in honor of Eugene O’Neill, four-time Pulitzer Prize-winner and America’s only playwright to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The O’Neill has been home to more than 1,000 new works for the stage and thousands more emerging artists. Scores of projects developed at the O’Neill have gone on to full production at theaters around the world. O’Neill programs include the National Playwrights Conference, National Music Theater Conference, National Critics Institute, National Puppetry Conference, Cabaret & Performance Conference, and National Theater Institute – which offers six credit-earning undergraduate training programs. In addition, the O’Neill owns and operates Monte Cristo Cottage as a museum open to the public. The O’Neill is the recipient of two Tony Awards and National Medal of Arts. www.theoneill.org.

About the National Theater Institute: With a singular schedule and an unmatched breadth of training, the National Theater Institute’s six semester-long programs offer students a springboard to the professional world at the two-time Tony Award-winning Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Founded in 1970, NTI’s credit-earning theater intensives—taught by industry professionals and master teachers—train actors, singers, directors, dancers, designers, playwrights and composers. www.NationalTheaterInstitute.org Watch: NTI- At A Glance