Middle School Playwrights Share Their Work in YAWP Festival

If it’s May, it must be time again to shine a spotlight on the middle school playwrights of the Young Artists and Writers Project (YAWP) at Stony Brook Southampton.

Six short plays written and performed by local middle school students will be presented at the campus’s Avram Theater on Saturday, May 11, at 7 p.m. as the culminating event of the 2019 Middle School Playwriting program. The plays were written by playwrights in YAWP classes at Bridgehampton, Ross School, and Shelter Island, along with one student from Hampton Bays who took part in the 2018 YAWP Summer Scriptwriting Workshop.

The Middle School Playwrights Festival represents a collaboration between student playwrights, actors and designers who have been taught and mentored by theater and writing professionals affiliated with Stony Brook Southampton’s MFA in Creative Writing and Literature, which created and sponsors the YAWP programs. Professional directors stage the plays, which encompass an array of genres—from comedies to dramas—with subject matter drawn from the students' own lives.

The Young Artists and Writers Project is helmed by Executive Director Emma Walton Hamilton and Program Director Will Chandler. The program is dedicated to mentoring middle and high school students in the development of creative expression and critical thinking through writing. The YAWP programs send professional writers and teaching artists into classrooms to lead workshops in a wide array of writing disciplines, including Playwriting, Screen Writing, Poetry, Personal Essay and Fiction.

“Dramatic writing and production skills give young people unparalleled lessons in communication and collaboration,” said Ms. Hamilton, a children’s book author, editor and arts educator who serves as director of the Southampton Children’s Literature Fellows program. As a co-founder of Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, she was the director of education and programming for young audiences for 17 years. “They build confidence, and have a direct impact on young people’s abilities to become engaged and compassionate citizens in later life. This project represents a wonderful synergy between all the creative disciplines and values about which we are passionate.”

More than 100 students participated in the YAWP Middle School Playwriting Residency this spring. Over the course of two months, students explored the basic elements of dramatic writing: how to develop ideas, characters, themes, dialogue and scenes. One play from each participating class was then selected for production in the Festival.

The YAWP Middle School Playwriting Festival takes place this year on Saturday, May 11, at 7 p.m. at the Avram Theater, in the Fine Arts Building on the campus of Stony Brook Southampton, 39 Tuckahoe Road, Southampton. Tickets to the performances are free. For reservations and more information, email william.chandler@stonybrook.edu.