Swimming Upstream highlights student screenwriting

SPHS junior Charlotte Dekle continues to coordinate her original play.

STORY CLEMENTINE EVANS

PHOTO SHIN-HYE (RACHEL) CHOI

J unior Charlotte Dekle has cast, produced, and written her own play entitled Swimming Upstream. With a combination of her love for writing and films, she has put them together into her very own, personal romantic comedy to share with others. Dekle’s production is a determined piece of writing that has endured many challenges in the process of creation. It will be performed in the Little Theater at South Pasadena High School on Friday, Feb. 10 and Saturday, Feb. 11 at 7pm. Tickets will be $5 and sold at the door. Ticket profits will go to the SPHS Drama program.

The plot of Swimming Upstream is a genuine love triangle. The main protagonist of the play, Mallory, is extremely desperate in search of “the One,” and wants to get into that relationship as soon as possible. On her quest to find her true love, she ends up dating two people at once and chaos emerges. As there are not enough rom-coms that include things Dekle likes, she wrote one for herself.

Dekle said,“If you are looking for [some] dirty-ness, if you [are] looking for sordidness in my play, you can find it. There is a lot of innuendos and puns, sexual puns because I…love puns and I love word play and I…thought it would be funny [to put some in there]…If you [are] not looking for anything too dirty then I think you [will] be fine, although there are some sexy puns in there, too.”

She was inspired to write her play after taking a screenwriting course at the University of Indiana in the summer of her freshman year.

“I finally got to hone my skills in [the] course and by the end, you were supposed to write your own film script that you could potentially [write] on your own [later on],” Dekle said. “And [the script] was only supposed to be five pages long but mine was 15 pages long [and] I just had this perfect idea and so I just wrote [my] story.”

She wrote her play in a very short amount of time. Dekle wrote the first 15 pages in one night and continued adding on to the script for the next three years. Now, her play is about 56 pages long.

Dekle drew inspiration from television and movie writers like Nora Ephron and Aaron Sorkin. Ephron has written some of Dekle’s favorite films, such as When Harry Met Sally. Sorkin’s dialogue in his scripts has influenced her in her current production. Her play has romance and comedy that Ephron includes in her scripts with the “wordy dialogue” Sorkin has in his. Dekle wanted her play to appeal to both teenagers and adults so she added in risqué dialogue she thought would attract different demographics of audience members.

Dekle reached out to SPHS Drama teacher, Nick Hoffa, to ask for help producing and writing her play. Hoffa and Dekle had several lengthy discussions about the script and how the play would actually be performed at the school.

Hoffa said, “We do a lot of writing short pieces in all three Drama classes, but no one has really come to me and said, ‘I have an actual play that I want to do.’… Charlotte has always been a super…dedicated Drama student so if she has something that she wrote I bet that it is great. It is the kind of thing that I want to be doing every year, having student-written plays to put on.”

Auditioning a cast for Swimming Upstream was a difficult process. In the beginning of 2022, auditions for the play were held and lots of students auditioned and were then cast. Dekle only had her Instagram profile, the SPHS Drama Instagram profile, and announcements from Hoffa to his classes which all advertised auditions. She discussed her play with Hoffa and the number of roles that she would need to fill with student actors. After casting the play, lots of students could not fit the play into their schedules and had to drop out of the production or withdrew their names from consideration. With lots of cast turnovers, Dekle had to convince her friends, fellow classmates, and other students she knew were good actors to join the cast.

Swimming Upstream will be performed in the Little Theater at South Pasadena High School on Friday, Feb. 10 and Saturday, Feb. 11 at 7pm. Tickets will be $5 and sold at the door. Ticket profits will go to the SPHS Drama program.