Philadelphia Young Playwrights

Long-term Communications Strategy & Media Relations for award-winning organization that taps the potential of youth & inspires learning through playwriting
Students at a Young Playwrights in-school mini-festival

Philadelphia Young Playwrights taps the potential of youth and inspires learning through playwriting.

In the Classroom
A hallmark of Philadelphia Young Playwrights is the Artistic Team — comprised of a classroom teacher and a theatre professional as a teaching artist. The Team works with student writers to inspire collaboration, perseverance, and transformation. Each student in the program writes at least a full scene, and most complete one-act plays.

In the Annual Playwriting Festival
Students from around the region are invited to submit their plays to the Annual Playwriting Festival. Young Playwrights’ Literary Committee reads each script and provides each and every student with individualized written feedback. First, second, and third place distinctions are awarded at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.

In the Theater
Select winners of the Annual Playwriting Festival are invited to develop and share their plays with the public in Young Playwrights’ Play Development Series. Young Playwrights’ commitment to student voices is realized through these public presentations that include in-school mini festivals, staged readings, workshop presentations and acclaimed professional productions. A number of Philadelphia Young Playwrights’ Festival winners have gone on to win Young Playwrights, Inc.’s national competition and seen their plays professionally produced in New York.

Click ON STAGE for Play Development Series information.

About the client:

Founded in 1987 by Adele Magner, and led today by Executive Producing Director Glen Knapp, Philadelphia Young Playwrights is an award-winning program that taps the potential of youth and inspires learning through playwriting in more than 50 public and private K-12 schools each year. A leader in the region’s educational programs for youth for 25 years and built upon its primary belief that all students have something important and valuable to say, Young Playwrights has enriched the Greater Philadelphia community, touching the lives of thousands of students, teachers and parents for the past twenty years. Since 1987, approximately 60 professional playwrights have led workshops, and nearly all of Philadelphia’s professional theater companies have participated by performing, producing, or directing student works. More than 60,000 young people have participated directly as playwrights and audience members, seeing their work produced in class or by professionals. Young Playwrights’ Literary Committee includes more than 60 educators, writers, parents, and former Young Playwrights students who read and critique each student script.

Philadelphia Young Playwrights Launches Paula Vogel Mentors Project

PHILADELPHIA (June 5, 2013) — Philadelphia Young Playwrights has kicked off its 25th anniversary celebration by announcing the launch of the Paula Vogel Mentors Project, a living award honoring the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and teacher and extending her mentorship legacy. The three-year pilot program will bring together five acclaimed professional playwrights as mentors for five promising young playwright fellows, who will embark on yearlong playwriting journeys.

Related Blog Entries

Young Voices High School Monologue Festival On Stage at The Adrienne Theater This Week

Theater showcase by & for youth in Philadelphia touches on big issues at the right time

Downloads

Philadelphia Young Playwrights 2010 Press Kit.pdfPhiladelphia Young Playwrights 2010 Press Kit.pdf849.34 KB
Students at a Young Playwrights in-school mini-festival at Beverly Hills Middle School4.4 MB
Paola NoguerasMilk and Honey by student playwright Emily Acker; 2010 Professional Productions at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre
Paola Nogueras		996.17 KB
Opening scene to the 2010 Young Voices High School Monologue Festival in collaboration with InterAct Theatre Company5.46 MB
2010 Adele Magner Memorial Award WinnersTeacher Lori Odum, student Jamekea S. Lee, and teaching artist Dwight Wilkins (of InterAct Theatre Company, far right), representing the General George G. Meade School with PYP's Dr. Amy Hodgdon
2010 Adele Magner Memorial Award Winners		218.93 KB
Paola NoguerasHarvey Kimmel, winning student playwrights Kya S. Johnson, Emily Acker, and Aimee Leong with Virginia Kimmel and Young Playwrights Executive Producing Director Glen Knapp at the 2010 Write On! benefit
Paola Nogueras		718.24 KB
Photo by Paola NoguerasWinning student playwrights Kya S. Johnson, Aimee Leong and Emily Acker
Photo by Paola Nogueras		592.27 KB

Press Mentions

Giving young writers a professional voice

Metro

Students wave to David O’Connor as he walks through Annenberg Hall. They know him as an adjunct professor in the School of Communications, but outside of Temple University, he’s better known as a director, working regularly at local companies like the Arden and Lantern Theater Co. Like so many local theater professionals, he’s perpetually juggling the roles of artist and teacher.

Students find their voices at Monologue Festival

Philadelphia Tribune

The Philadelphia Young Playwrights and InterAct Theatre presented the winning monologues from the 2011 Young Voices High School Monologue Festival Feb. 16-19 at the Adrienne Theater.

Thirteen of the monologues presented, which dealt with such issues as identity, bullying, culture, and current events were from public school students, representing such schools as Constitution High School, The Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, Academy at Palumbo and Science Leadership Academy.

“The monologue festival gives both organizations a chance to spread learning to schools not in our core [playwrighting] program,” said Glen Knapp, Executive Producing Director of Philadelphia Young Playwrights. The monologue program gives students the chance to work with local theater actors, directors and dramaturgs, who help develop and edit the pieces, then act them out on stage.

Her statement on bullying is a crowd-pleaser

Northeast Times

Alexandra Henry writes because she has something to say.

Henry, a 14-year-old student at the Arts Academy of Benjamin Rush High School on Knights Road, also got to see her writing performed by a professional actor.

The Morrell Park resident wrote a monologue recently chosen for a performance at the Adrienne Theater in Center City as part of the 2011 Young Voices High School Monologue Festival. Henry was inspired by her own experiences to write about bullying in schools, a subject that increasingly has been in the news.

Plays in progress: A wintry walk on South Street was grist for the latest batch of recruits in Paula Vogel's Playwriting Boot Camp.

Philadlephia Inquirer

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel walked with purpose along South Street on Sunday, more than 40 people in tow. To pedestrians trying to get past them, this must have seemed a tour with no purpose at all.

Occasionally they halted. Then “On to our next stop!” Vogel would signal.

They paused at a mix of places - Harry’s Occult Shop, a Caribbean restaurant, a pizzeria. Isaiah Zagar’s Magic Garden of mosaics, a playground on Lombard, a Starbucks, an alley. Each time, someone would talk to the rest about the place where they stood.

If you’re a theatergoer and could see under their winter bundling, you might have recognized a few of them. One was Quiara Alegría Hudes, the Philadelphia-bred playwright who wrote the book for In the Heights, the hit Broadway musical whose national tour opens Tuesday at the Academy of Music. There were high school members of Philadelphia Young Playwrights, and their mentors from the University of the Arts and elsewhere, and a dozen major artists whose work is regularly visible on professional stages across the region.

Philadelphia contest rewards young playwrights

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Monday night, Haley took the stage to field audience questions and get feedback. Her principal, Iris Parker of Cedarbrook Middle School, complimented her ability.

“I loved the sophisticated writing and the way you were able to capture what adults would say. I was amazed at how well you spoke through the priest,” Parker said.

Haley worked with the Wilma’s literary manager, Walter Bilderback, to make her play clearer and to add depth to some of her more minor characters.

“For a really experienced playwright, it’s really a tough thing to let your words go out there in the air, even if your audience is friends and family. I think we should all applaud her courage,” Bilderback said.

‘Torn Between’ touches on interracial dating

The Philadelphia Tribune

Science Leadership Academy student Aimee Leong’s original monologue was featured in the Philadelphia Young Playwrights’ 2010 Professional Productions March 2-5 at the Suzanne Roberts Theater. The monologue, “Torn Between,” which deals with interracial dating, was written as an English class assignment last spring while she was a sophomore.

The play's the thing for aspiring youth; Students work with pros

The Philadelphia Inquirer

[the Young Playwrights program] gives student writers opportunities to work with theater professionals to refine their work, and in the process to make discoveries about their own place in the world or about a talent they never knew they had, said David Bradley, a Philadelphia-based theater professional and arts educator who directs Acker’s Milk and Honey.

Client Contact Info:
Official Website: www.PhillyYoungPlaywrights.org
Young Playwrights on Twitter: @PYPlaywrights
Young Playwrights on Facebook: facebook.com/PYPlaywrights