Eugene O'Neill Theater Center Inaugurates Young Playwrights Festival
High School Students' Plays To Be Developed With O'Neill Center Staff

May 10, 2006

The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center will hold its first-ever Young Playwrights Festival, involving high school students from Waterford who have written short plays. O'Neill staff will work with the students to stage readings of the plays in a process similar to that of the O'Neill's professional new play development conferences. The Festival will culminate in a script-in-hand public reading of the students' work on Saturday, May 20.

Waterford High School students Jon Skalski (junior), Ánie McCarthy (senior) and Vanessa Willoughby (senior) have been selected to participate in the 2006 Eugene O'Neill Young Playwrights Festival. These young writers' short plays were submitted by their English teachers and selected by the O'Neill literary office for development at the O'Neill from May 18-20. The students and their teachers will work with a creative team composed of a director, a dramaturg and actors to develop their scripts and stage them as readings. The development process for each script will draw on the techniques used during the O'Neill's renowned professional summer play development conferences. Through these methods, the students will take their creative writing project to the next step, by moving from the initial isolation of writing to the collaborative process involved in making their script into a play – a communicative theatrical event to share with an audience.

"This is a unique program that will enrich the students' creative writing experience," notes Amy Sullivan, Executive Director of the O'Neill. "It will allow these young writers to learn about collaborating with other creative staff to express their ideas and how to bring a play from the page to the stage. We are thrilled to be partnering with the Waterford Public Schools to make this opportunity available. We hope that the Young Playwrights Festival will grow to include students from other towns in future years."

The plays selected for the Young Playwrights Festival are The Process of Blurring by Ánie McCarthy, I Think it's Monday by Jon Skalski, and Wallflowers in Bloom by Vanessa Willoughby.

The script-in-hand readings of these plays will be held in the Rose Barn Theater at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, 305 Great Neck Road, Waterford, CT on Saturday, May 20 at 5:00 p.m. The public is invited to attend.

The O'Neill's Young Playwrights Festival is funded in part by a grant from the Connecticut Humanities Council.