Sudents’ Plays Will Get Full Treatment at Avram

As the culminating event of the fall semester of the new Young American Writers Project (YAWP) at Stony Brook Southampton, a festival of short plays written and performed by high school students from area schools will be presented at at the Avram Theater.

“Dramatic writing and production skills give young people unparalleled lessons in communication and collaboration,” Executive Director Emma Walton Hamilton said in a statement this week. “They build confidence and have a direct impact on young people’s ability to become engaged and compassionate citizens in later life. This project represents a wonderful synergy between all the creative disciplines and values about which I am passionate.”

The program is affiliated with Stony Brook Southampton’s master of fine arts degree program in writing and literature. Participants include students from Bridgehampton, Pierson in Sag Harbor, Southampton, Eastport South Manor, and the Foreign Language Academy of Global Studies (FLAGS) in the Bronx, as well as physically challenged students sponsored by the Southampton Fresh Air Home.

Saturday’s presentation represents the collaboration between student playwrights, actors and designers who have been taught and mentored by theater and writing professionals.

“When we go into schools, we work closely with classroom teachers as we convey the basic elements of dramatic writing,” Program Director Will Chandler added. “Learning dramatic writing is a great way to improve overall writing skills, but what we’re really teaching them is that each student has a ‘voice,’ and we want to hear it.”

Professional directors stage the plays, which encompass a variety of genres—from comedies to dramas—with subject matter drawn from the students’ own lives.

The Young American Writers Project is dedicated to mentoring middle and high school students in the development of creative expression and critical thinking through writing; the program is an integral part of Stony Brook Southampton’s commitment to its community and to the next generation of readers and writers. YAWP programs send professional writers and teaching artists into classrooms to lead workshops in a wide array of writing disciplines, including playwriting, screenwriting, poetry, personal essay and fiction.

More than 100 students participated in the inaugural YAWP High School Playwriting Residency and Retreat this fall. Over the course of two months, students explored the basic elements of dramatic writing: how to develop ideas, characters, themes, dialogue and scenes. At least one play from each participating class was then selected for production in the festival.

The Young American Writers Project is run by Ms. Walton Hamilton and Mr. Chandler. Ms. Walton Hamilton is a bestselling children’s book author, editor and arts educator. A co-founder of Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, she served as the theater’s co-artistic director, and subsequently director of education and programming for young audiences for 17 years.

Mr. Chandler, an American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) Nicholl Fellowship screenwriter, also served as education director and as a teaching artist for Bay Street. He has written a number of screenplays for clients ranging from Sony Pictures to actor Russell Crowe and has been a story analyst/script doctor for ABC, CBS, NBC, Viacom and HBO, among others.

For curriculum development and program design, the YAWP administrators drew on the strengths of the Stony Brook Southampton MFA faculty, including novelist and MFA Director Robert Reeves; recent Whiting Award-winning poet Julie Sheehan; best-selling memoirist and editor-in-chief of The Southampton Review, Lou Ann Walker; and screenwriter and Emmy Award-winning producer Annette Handley Chandler.

Mr. Reeves said in the same statement, “In this, our second full semester of YAWP, we’re beginning to see a range of creative expression that is truly astonishing. On the same Avram stage, within a single year, we can now present creative work from young playwrights in middle school, and from those in secondary schools, and then on to the work of our new undergraduate Performance Lab, to the new emphasis on playwriting at the master’s level, and finally to commissioned work from the most distinguished playwrights in the country. These are wonderful developments for our campus and for arts education on the East End.”

The YAWP High School Playwrights Festival will be presented on Saturday, December 12, at 7 p.m. in the Avram Theater. Tickets for the performance are free. For reservations and more information, e-mail william.chandler@stonybrook.edu.

The Avram Theater is located in the Fine Arts Building on the campus of Stony Brook Southampton, 239 Montauk Highway in Southampton.