Conversations with Emerging Playwrights

In discussions about innovation, scripts often play a major role. Developing new work and encouraging playwrights is a cornerstone of creating innovative work.  NEXT asked four emerging playwrights, Jose “CC” Casas, Deni Krueger, Kathryn Petersen and Rhiana Yazzie about the process of writing plays for young audiences.

How did you begin writing plays for young audiences?

CC: I began writing plays for young audiences as a graduate student (in the department of Creative Writing) at Arizona State University. I had never really considered writing for young audiences until graduate students in the Theatre for Youth program who had seen my previous work encouraged me to write for their field. At first I ignored their requests, but the more I read plays for young audiences, the more I realized there was a need for theatre that talked to young audiences and not at them. I wrote my first TYA play, the vine for junior high and high school students whom I sensed were largely ignored [by the TYA movement]. Since then, I have written two more TYA plays: la rosa still grows beyond the wall and la ofrenda (the offering).

Deni: I don't think I had one clear beginning point where the angels on high sang "laaaa", touching my pen with their halos saying "Write for the children." I think it was a natural culmination of the things in life I enjoy. I love writing and I love kids. I like the freedom to turn a plain, dark closet into a star filled passageway that leads to a secret underground room full of trains and lost dollies. I love the child's imagination that can see that closet and that room. The adults want what's real; the kids want what's possible. And the audience I want on the journey with me is the one that is willing to sneak through the closet, open the door, and play with the trains and the dollies. Because I know that if they look long enough, they might even find a small angel in the corner that sings to them when they hold it close.

Kathryn: I began by creating original pieces with young people in educational theater programs.  I co-founded a company called MUSE that did this in low-income urban environments in various states.  We hired a team of artists and recruited about 30 young people per project and investigated themes based on ancient and urban myths and wove them together into a theatrical frame. 

I've been a professional actress for almost twenty years, so I've done a lot of teaching along the way. I've taught diverse populations---senior citizens, vocational students, young people with psychosis, all sorts of ethnic backgrounds, upper middle class adults, young children. I've often had the students create original plays or scenes or characters in these theater classes.

I began my career as a professional playwright when I collaborated with David Bradley (a director at People's Light and Theater Company) and Billy Yalowitz (a Philadelphia choreographer) on a project based on the Icarus legend.  As we began dreaming and scheming together, I came up with a piece that was a contemporary story based on the legend, which incorporated a lot of music and movement.  This piece, The Icarus Box, ran at People's Light in 1998 and then toured to elementary schools in the Philadelphia region. It was my first professionally produced play.

Rhiana: I was considered a “young audience” when I started writing!  My first attempts at plays were very personal and often dealt with specific incidents that had happened in my life or relationships with family and friends.  There weren’t always a lot of answers from my parents and I recall always searching for solutions from anywhere else—especially the media.  It was vicarious; I lived to see something on TV or film that mirrored the experiences I was having with friends or boys or for something that explored things that I wish I could do.  I wrote my first “official” TYA play during my last year in college when a friend who was working with the New Mexico Council on Drug and Alcohol Dependency asked if I could help her with a theatre presentation at a community center.  I volunteered to write a play about a kid who was being pressured to drink by some bullies.  It became a one-act play that we staged in a community center.  That then led to another short play that was presented in a high school for at-risk youth.  Since that time, I have found that most of the pieces I had written for young audiences came from a need in the community for work that could reflect the issues and faces that the youth were familiar with; for example, my last three TYA pieces have all been about Native American youth.

What has been your biggest joy and your biggest frustration as a playwright writing for young audiences?

CC: The biggest joy as a playwright for young audience is the same joy that I get for writing for adult audiences. When people are affected by my work it is the greatest compliment. As a playwright, I don't mind people leaving the theatre hating me. I don't mind them leaving the theatre loving me. What I don't like is people leaving the theatre feeling as though their time and money were wasted. If my work can have an emotional impact and/or challenge people to think and create social discourse, then I am pleased. So far, my experience in writing for young audiences has produced very positive responses.

My frustration is dealing with a certain perceived TYA aesthetic. I will go on the record saying this is a broad generalization; however, it has been quite frustrating to deal with people and theatres in this field who want to dilute my work. There are many people who put too many restrictions on what I can write as a playwright or, as a theatre, what they are willing to expose to young audiences. I feel that young audiences need to be given more credit in terms of the material they can handle. I look around and I think these kids know more about the "real" world than I did at their age --both the good and the bad. TYA theatres need to show stories that are based on real issues that challenge young audiences. When a theatre wants to turn my work into an episode of Captain Kangaroo, it makes me not want to write for this field. This is what I struggle with on a constant basis, but I will continue to write for young audiences (as well as adult audiences) because the younger generation cannot be ignored.

Deni: My greatest joy has been seeing my work produced. My greatest frustration has been getting my work produced. I think it's difficult to establish new relationships with theatres who are willing to risk developing and producing new work. Part of the problem is that I'm not good at advertising and, more specifically, sales pitches. How do you say to someone, "I've got this idea that I think is great,but I'm new and I'm probably going to make mistakes that an established writer wouldn't make, which might make this project cost a little more in terms of time and money.”  Still, I know that when the play is over the audience, both young people and adults alike, will walk away with an idea...line...image from the production that will stay with them for a very long time. And they will be glad they saw the play instead of watching TV that night.

Kathryn: At People's Light, we have a Family Series.  I love writing for this series because the age range is so broad.  I'm writing on many levels at once and never talking down to any age.  I find that adults let go and open up their imaginations when they see children involved with the story on stage.  Children commit to a story when they are challenged and see protagonists their age.  And young protagonists go through big issues -- the deep matter.  If you get your hands on that as a playwright, every adult in the room will be riveted because you are telling the origins of their own stories.

At the moment, a big frustration is practical.  If your play is an adaptation of a Newbury award-winning book, a popular movie, or is a popular title from legend or fairy tale, you have a better chance of being produced and drawing audiences.  Original plays, not based on any other sources, are being done, but theaters take financial risks doing them. 

Another frustration I have is safety.  I understand that adults want to keep the young people in their charge safe.  They want to protect them from 'questionable' material.  But theater should be provocative as well as entertaining.  It should raise questions in young people.  There are limits to what a playwright would investigate in a theater piece with young audiences, but in our current cultural climate, I find those limits more and more strangling.  Of course, the way around this is metaphor and allegory, which you can do with more abandon in pieces for young audiences.

Rhiana: Sometimes when I tell people that I am writing a children’s play, it seems to automatically frame the piece as being something from a lesser category, as if plays for children do not require the same skill or effort as writing for adults.  Often people will think that the play is nothing more than a lesson plan disguised as theatre.  I came up against this a lot as I was beginning my research for Wild Horses, which parallels the violence a contemporary California Indian girl faces in her public school with the violent world her grandparents encountered with colonization.  When I spoke about this premise, some assumed it was going to be a historical piece and warned me that a California Mission period play wouldn’t be interesting.

My greatest joy in writing for young audiences is the freedom to push the boundaries of the suspension of disbelief.  When I’m writing a play for young audiences I don’t get confined to office walls or get trapped in rhetoric.  Like in any good play, the most important part is the interaction between characters on a gut level. I also like to think that somehow I am making an impact on those who see the show.  Recalling my teen years of looking for answers and for people I could identify and feel safe with, I hope that in my plays I can somehow address those issues that are nowhere to be found in other media.

What can we do as a field to encourage more playwrights to write for this audience?

CC: Writing for this field has been a struggle for me at times, but I work towards seeing the positive in it. I would tell other playwrights to write from their hearts and respect the art form. At the moment, it seems like TYA offers the best opportunities for writers. I know many playwrights who have written for young audiences because they were commissioned to, and unfortunately, it shows. I know paying the bills is important, but a check should not be the sole reason to write anything! I tell writers “If you're going to write for this field, write stories that are authentic and that speak to young audiences in respectful and intelligent ways. An audience is an audience, no matter what the age. However, know that it will be a challenge dealing with a lot of theatres concerning subject matter.” If writers aren't willing to fight for their stories then, maybe, they shouldn't write for this field. But if they really want to affect change in this field, then I encourage them to fight to change the perception of what it means to write for young audiences. I encourage playwrights to write TYA plays that speak to both young audiences and adults. Playwrights should pride themselves on writing stories that are both specific and universal. Write so that everyone in that theatre can leave your play having truly been part of the experience of live theatre. Playwrights apply this to their adult audiences. There is no reason they should change that for young audiences.

Deni:  I think we need to work on eliminating the stigma that is all too frequently associated with children's theatre as somehow being of lesser quality. I understand the field's necessary ties to adaptations of popular children's literature as a means of funding for the theatre, but, as we all have seen, books don't always make good plays...even in the hands of a skilled playwright. Books live in our head in a way that plays cannot; plays live in our senses in a way that books cannot. And a play that is written to truly live on stage will not carry the stigmatism of being a lesser work. But first, we need a place to develop the work...a writer and a theatre that are willing to risk...and a little imagination about what's possible.

Kathryn: The more I look at my own path into writing for young audiences, the more I realize that commissions really made it possible for me to become a professional playwright.  As a theater artist, I'm used to wearing many hats.  I have to in order to make a living.  There may be many other actors or directors out there who teach young people who have great ideas for writing for young audiences but need the financial encouragement to take the time to do it.

Rhiana: Changing writers’ perceptions of writing for young audiences is most important.  Playwrights should understand that young people are sophisticated and there is no need to dumb down your work for them.  There can also be so much more potential for testing out your own creativity.  No one is going to question that two of your characters are a talking mountain and a pair of sunglasses.  If you’ve done your job right, then even the adults in the audience are going see some of themselves reflected in those sunglasses.  Young audiences are a great barometer of your work. They definitely do not keep their reactions to themselves; if they love it they’ll tell you and if they’re bored you’ll hear it.  It is a wonderful medium in which to challenge yourself to do your best while writing for the most important people in our society, our children.  And what better reason could there be to write?

Jose “CC” Casas is a playwright, director and actor from Baldwin Park, California. He has a B.A. in Dramatic Arts from the University of California (Santa Barbara), a M.A. in Theatre Arts from California State University (Los Angeles) and a M.F.A. in Creative Writing/Playwriting from Arizona State University. His plays include: A Bag of Oranges, The Assassination of Erik Estrada, all brown all chignon, the vine and la rosa still grows beyond the wall. Three of his short plays, hermanos, breaking news and timothy were finalists for Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival. His play, Freddie’s Dead/Mindprobe, won the Sherill C. Corwin/Metropolitan Theatre Award for best One-Act Play. His play, 14, was a winner of the 2003-2004 ARIZONI Award for Best Production-Original Play. It was also published in the book, Ethnotheatre: An Anthology of Reality theatre (AltaMira Press). la ofrenda (the offering) was a finalist in the 2004-2005 Bonderman Playwriting for Youth National Competition.

Deni Krueger is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, where she studied drama and theatre for youth and playwriting. She was a finalist for the 2005 National Waldo M. and Grace C. Bonderman Playwriting Workshop, and has been commissioned by Stage One Children's Theatre of Louisville. Her ten-minute plays have been produced in Austin, Dallas, and New York. She attended the 2002 and 2003 Kennedy Center ACTF Playwriting Intensive, and served as a playwriting mentor for VSA Arts and a selection committee member for AATE's initial Playwright's in Our Schools Project. Deni is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

Kathryn Petersen is an Artistic Associate and a member of the resident acting company at The People's Light and Theater Company outside of Philadelphia.  She's acted in over fifty productions regionally and taught extensively.  In 1988, she co-founded The MUSE Theater Company, which developed play-making programs for young people in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois.  People's Light has produced four of her plays: The Icarus Box (1998), Through the Glass Looking (1999) and Arthur’s Stone, Merlin’s Fire—The Making of a King (2003) and Jack & the Beanstalk, an American Panto (2005.)  Next year, Arthur's Stone, Merlin's Fire and Through the Glass Looking will be published by Dramatic Publishing Company.

Rhiana Yazzie is a Navajo playwright originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico whose plays have been performed from Mexico to Alaska.  Her new Theatre for Young Audiences play is Wild Horses which was the 2005 new play commission at Native Voices Theatre at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles and will be presented at the Kennedy Center's New Visions/New Voices in May 2006. She is currently co-producing a documentary set on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and is co-writing an animated featured with one of the creators of Raven Tales a computer animated series based on Native American mythical characters.  She can also be found directing new plays for East West Players’ David Henry Hwang Writer’s Institute staged reading series.