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It's not often that Kansas City has the opportunity to experience new works from local playwrights.  But at the end of April, the metropolis was graced with young, vibrant talent from the Coterie Theatre's 17^th Annual Young Playwrights Festival.  Jeff Church, Coterie's artistic director, created Reaching the Write Minds, a program he designed during his residency at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., "to give voice to emerging young playwrights." Church brought his program to Kansas City in 1992, establishing an opportunity for high school teens to explore playwriting and theatre as a viable career opportunity.

The process begins when facilitators for Reaching the Write Minds host a five-hour workshop on playwriting at area high schools.  Following the workshop, two or three students are invited to interview for a spot at the Young Playwrights Roundtable.  Selections are based not only on talent and promise, but also through a demonstrated independent study of the craft that shows a desire to write for the theatre.  Once a student is selected, his or her 'membership' in the Roundtable continues until high school graduation.

The plays selected for this year's festival capture "the kind of thinking and the kind of drama on the playwrights' mind," said Church before the evening began. As an audience participant, I think it's safe to say that these young artists definitely have their pulse on modern society.  Their plays reflected on America, the future and the human race. Church said that every member of the Roundtable gives feedback on each play; so in essence, each play performed at the festival has blossomed through the efforts of all participants.

The playwright facilitators this year were Nancy Marcy, Ry Kincaid, Vi Tran and Meghann Henry, who helped guide the students through the fundamentals of playwriting.

Plays for the evening of Wednesday, April 29, were:

            *Send by Taylor Ayers, North Kansas City High School

            *Tim Schmidt Chronicles: Cliché Break Up Scene by Taylor A. Hopkins, Barstow School

            *Tim Schmidt Chronicles: Theatre Meet Up by Chase Williams, Barstow School

            *We Watches the Watchmen by Brian Snodgrass, Lansing High School

            *Sufficient Title by Nate Baldwin, Mill Valley High School

            *The Index and My Real Play, both by Zachary Weaver, Home-Schooled

            *The Whole Kissing Thing by Elizabeth Golden, Notre Dame de Sion

The plays presented were remarkable in their style and story.  Some were innovative, like Ayers' Send, whose characters communicated only through text messages, a very current concept unique in its writing and execution.  Others capitalized on previous ideas, like Baldwin's Sufficient Title, who gave us the breakup of a couple through dialogues using emotional direction rather than the usual, everyday words.  This play had many similar characteristics of the short film Sunday Afternoon from Killing My Lobster Productions, but the audience enjoyed the witty, clever repartee and distinctive style.

It must be noted that every play was quite good, but one playwright to watch in particular is Zachary Weaver.  His first play, The Index¸ explored the desperate need for individuals to have their lives noticed.  Jezebelle Wently (remarkably played by Jeanne Averil) enters a shop in the year 2062 where Cole Minthon (nicely portrayed by Bruce Roach), the shopkeeper, is in the midst of leaving for the day.  A tome, or index, listing the names of every human being and their accomplishments sits ominously on a shelf.  Jezebelle, desperate to know that her life is worth something, urges Cole to look up her name in the index, but her name isn't found. Only after looking up the names of her relatives does she discover a reference to herself as the caretaker of her dying mother. Is it enough to make a difference in the lives of others, Jezebelle isn't sure, but she decides that whatever she does with her life from this point needs to be worth her time. The question Weaver was asking delves into our desire to make a difference. Are the small things we undertake sufficient to satisfy our desire to be remembered after we're gone? Or do we need to accomplish monumental achievements in order for that to happen?

Weaver's second play, My Real Play, placed the ego of a playwright front and center and then heightened it to give us a view of the human ego in general. Keenan Ramos played Flynt, a confident playwright who believes every play he has written is more real and truer than every other play out there. To prove his point, he does a staged reading of one his plays about his friend Nathan (hysterically played by Doggin Brown) starring Nathan and the actual girl he has a crush on, Nelly (Teisha Bankston). Using the actual persons instead of actors makes his play closer to real life, he says, but doesn't really prove that point. Giving us this portrayal of life as it is in the head of a writer showed us that theatre truly reflects humanity and that humanity truly needs the theatre.

In both of his plays, Weaver was able to captivate the adult and teen audience alike. With inherently universal themes and well-written plays, this young playwright, who is one of three Roundtable members not affiliated with a high school but rather home-schooled, has the intelligence of Edward Albee and the writing skills of a theatre writer many years his senior.

 The plays from each of these writers could be lessons in writing for the theatre, lessons many new playwrights could utilize. The quality of these plays is not only a testament to the talent of the authors, but also to the guidance they receive from the Coterie's teaching artists and Church's innovative mind. Their collaborative efforts as a Roundtable not only helped these youthful writers create good plays, but perhaps might also guide them to become theatre professionals in the future. 

 REVIEW
Coterie Theatre
Young Playwrights Festival
April 29 and 30, 2009
Crown Center (upper level)
www.coterietheatre.org