3 minute read
Playwrights Shine on Stage
Five FWCD Acting students had an original play or monologue win in the 2022 Neighborhood Play Contest. As winners, Viktor Harrington ’23 (pictured), Olivia Kersh ’24, Fiona Morris ’26, Chance Odom ’26 and Tanmay Yaramachu ’23, all students in Upper School Theatre Director Siouxsie Easter’s Acting I class, had their pieces performed in the Festival of the Kid in May. Eight of Easter’s students submitted to the contest; 2022 marked Kersh’s second year in a row as a finalist.
In Easter’s Acting I, Advanced Acting and Musical Theatre courses, Easter teaches a unit on playwriting. Students read and synthesize plays; study the importance of dialogue and how it is set up; focus on strong monologues with a beginning, middle and end; and decipher characters to determine why they behave as they do. Assignments range from monologues and short plays to jukebox musicals (in Musical Theatre), stage musicals featuring well-known popular songs of a particular artist or a mix of artists rather than original music.
One assignment was Eulogy for a Goldfish. “I encourage the students to write about what they know,” Easter said. “The emotions for this assignment ranged. There was sadness, as you would expect when one loses a pet, over-the-top sarcasm, dry humor and more. I was so proud of the students’ range.”
As a result of their excellent writing, Harrington, Morris, Odom and Yaramachu each had their Goldfish Eulogy performed on stage on May 17, and Kersh had her play, Upside Down, performed on May 18 at StageWest Theatre. In addition, two FWCD students, Nic Medaris ’23 and Ava Vanderpoel ’26, auditioned for roles and performed in the festival.
Kersh, who loves to tell stories through writing and acting, was excited when her play, Sleep, was a festival winner last year. The play’s central character can see spirits and dead people. “It was written from a calm place,” Kersh said. “As a deep empath, I wrote it with peace in my heart. The character of Man in the Brown Hat was not scary; he offered a look into the spiritual world.”
The production showed the play in a different light, and Kersh quickly learned why. “The artistic director took a twisted, creepy approach to the play, more horror-like. It was good, and the actors were amazing, but it was not what I envisioned,” Kersh said. “When I shared with Mrs. Easter my thoughts, she pointed out that I, as the playwright, had not given stage directions. What I had written in peace had been transformed. You better believe that stage directions became part of my writing process!”
The first words on the Upside Down script are “Start Mid stage. Do not address crowd.” It tells the story of a rollover car crash she had in her neighborhood. “I don’t think of myself as a writer,” Kersh said. “I am a storyteller. I like to take my thoughts and ideas and run with them. There is no punctuation or grammar in acting.
“Mrs. Easter has helped me grow as both a storyteller and an actor, and Mr. [Jon] Shipley [Upper School English Teacher] gave me the courage to write. His advice to me once was, ‘Give me a good story.’ I got a good grade on that assignment, and my confidence went up.”
The festival featured 29 original plays, scenes or monologues, and a cast of 34 talented student actors brought their words to life on the professional stage.
