By Angela Coleman, Philadelphia Young Playwrights Philadelphia Young Playwrights, in collaboration with InterAct Theatre Company, opened the 2014 Young Voices Monologue Festival March 19-29  to 14 packed houses of student and public audience members. The festival featured professional productions of 18 winning high school students’ monologues chosen from over 400 submissions.  Currently, a post-festival tour is also taking these powerful stories to 10 more sites around Philadelphia. Thanks to Knight Foundation, Philadelphia Young Playwrights was able to greatly expand the reach of the 2014 festival, touring professional actors into schools pre-festival to inspire writing with past winning monologues , running the festival over 2 weeks, and taking a post-festival tour to 10 sites around the Philadelphia region.  The monologues chosen for the 2014 Young Voices Monologue Festival were the results of inspiration garnered from our two week pre-tour last October, where previously winning monologues were performed to help inspire participating Philadelphia students to express their voice in a monologue of their own. Read below what Stage Manager Angela Coleman (a Philadelphia Young Playwrights Alumna) had to say about the pre-festival tour, some audience and actor reflections, and then stay tuned for more around the 2014 festival itself and the post-festival tour. Actor Akeem Davis performs a monologue.

Actor Akeem Davis advises students on overcoming stage fright

Actress Ainyé AnnaDora performs a monologue while a student audience member looks on.

For two weeks three actors and I, their tour manager, traveled around the Philadelphia area visiting 13 High schools and performing for over 875 students. What we brought those students were the past winning monologues from the annual Young Voices Monologue Festival through Philadelphia Young Playwrights and Interact Theatre Company.

We took our show into auditoriums, classrooms, and libraries and met students just like the ones who wrote monologues we were performing. The show consisted of 9 pieces followed by a talkback between the actors, myself, and the students. During these talkbacks one particular monologue seemed to stick out in the minds of many of our audience members; F.A.T by Kya S. Johnson from Little Flower High School for Girls. In this monologue a young woman runs on a treadmill, trying to lose weight so she can win the heart of a young man.  At the end she decides to leave the treadmill behind and love her body as it is;Fabulous And Thick! During our talkbacks many students spoke about their own experiences with body image and how much they appreciated that monologue.

When teaching dramatic writing, one can easily turn to great playwrights like Shakespeare for examples that students can aspire to. Even still, one of the best ways to inspire student writing is to allow that student see themselves in the work that you put in front of them. Show them that they are able to create something just as great as Shakespeare; something like F.A.T.As a former winning playwright myself, my teachers inspired me not by asking who I wanted to be when I grew up but by asking who I wanted to be at 16. Being a part of this tour and seeing the work from Philadelphia teens made me appreciate even more what I learned as a young playwright; how to listen. In Philadelphia there’s an incredible range of experiences and opportunities for our students. Seeing this work makes you realize that there’s always an interesting story. Philadelphia Young Playwrights sparked and continues to fuel the desire to see those stories.

Now that the tour is over, we at Philly Young Playwrights wait. We wait to see how many students respond to the opportunity we’ve given them. We wait to see if any of those students turn themselves into a Pulitzer Prize willing playwright. But most importantly, we wait to see what it is they have to say. The deadline for the fall monologue festival is December 1^st . The winning monologues will be performed in the March and that will be followed by yet another tour so stay tuned!

If you’d like to read the monologues we performed as well as many other writing resources you can check out the Philadelphia Young Playwrights website at http://phillyyoungplaywrights.org/youngvoices

Pre-festival tour audience reactions.

“I absolutely love seeing the actors from Philly Young Playwrights perform on stage. They bring such a realism to the monologue and story they’re trying to bring forth to the audience. It just inspires me and gives me more motivation for my dreams. The monologues that were performed for us were mind blowing. I find it baffling how kids this young can write such hard hitting stories and pose such thoughtful questions for our own lives. I’m so glad PYP was able to come to us!”

–Alyssa Pinkl, The Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush/12th Grade (2013 Young Voices Monologue Festival playwright, The Feelings of Numb)

“I would like to thank you for the fantastic performance you brought to Rush Arts on Friday. The production translated beautifully to our space and completely captured the imagination of the audience. The performers were not only generous with the talent, but with encouragement as well. The students are so excited to start writing and fully empowered to explore their voices. What a great springboard into the Festival submission season. You can look forward to at least 80 submissions from our theatre artists and I think you may have inspired some dancers, vocalists, and filmmakers as well. I feel extremely fortunate that the Rush community continues to benefit from the all the new and exciting work you are doing.”

–Sally Wojcik, The Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush/Theatre Arts Faculty