Young Artists And Writers Project Offers Five-Day Scriptwriting Retreat

The Young Artists and Writers Project, or YAWP, at the Stony Brook Southampton campus is offering 30 high school students the opportunity to take part in a five-day, four-night scriptwriting retreat.

Held from November 14 to 18, the retreat is open to students from the East End, the Harlem Educational Activities Fund and the Robert College, an American boarding school in Istanbul, Turkey. The workshop aims to improve students’ writing and communication skills and build their confidence while they pen scripts in a supportive environment and forge lasting connections with new friends.

The retreat begins with exercises to find story ideas and identify themes, and students’ scripts and characters will continue to be developed and workshopped throughout the week, culminating in a staged reading of each script, open to family members.

The students will return December 9 and 10 for a YAWP joint production at the campus’s Avram Theater. Select plays from the retreat and from YAWP in-school writing classes will be presented, with students working as actors, stagehands and assistant directors. All scripts, regardless of whether or not they were chosen for production, will be eligible for inclusion in the YAWP e-zine, yawpezine.com.

The fee for the workshop is $500, inclusive of lodging, food and materials. Students who are interested in attending may contact their English teachers, principals or william.chandler@stonybrook.edu. For more information, visit stonybrook.edu/yawp. Apply by Tuesday, November 1.