Touchstone’s Young Playwright’s Festival: Seriously fun theater

For 11 years, the youth of the Lehigh Valley have had the opportunity to create original works of theater and perform them on stage. This unique situation is brought to them through their schools and Touchstone Theatre, a Bethlehem theater company that has been operating out of the South Side since the late 1980s. Touchstone created the Young Playwrights’ Lab in 2005 to encourage creativity in children.

The Playwright’s program focuses on helping youths think on their feet before they begin writing. Mary Wright has been teaching with the program for six years. “[Teachers] help students create characters and themes to form an idea for a play from the ground up,” says Wright, who also serves as the Lab Coordinator. “We don’t want to just see them create characters that are copies of their favorite TV show character. We really work to help them find their original ideas.”

The 11th annual Young Playwrights’ Festival is May 14 in Baker Hall, Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University. The preshow “Meet the Playwrights” party begins at 6 p.m. Doors to Baker Hall open at 6:40 p.m. for the 7 p.m. performance.

For students, parents, family, friends and audience, the Young Playwrights’ Festival is seriously fun theater.

The program began in 2005 when Touchstone Theatre visited Donegan Elementary School in Bethlehem. The group had students read Wishbone books (the literary talking dog of PBS fame) and create plays based on what they read. Teachers and students were excited to see their ideas in writing and pushed for more. The result is the Playwrights’ Lab program seen today, engaging 10 local elementary and middle schools this year that created more than 130 original one-act plays.

These aren’t just any one-act plays. Wright says the plays that were created span every conceivable genre and truly showcase what can happen in the mind of a young student. Five exceptional scripts were chosen for full production in the Festival, and six more were selected to have scenes read as part of the evening’s performance. “You’ll see just about everything,” Wright laughed. “We have a play about an island that’s entirely inhabited by dogs who enter dance competitions and another about a female secret agent who is searching for a recipe for a Pina Colada that has to be taken to the president to save the world.”

While the plays lean toward fiction, the students are simultaneously writing about real issues they face every day. Wright can see the power in every play. “There’s a naïveté because they are kids, but some of the things they write about are incredible. They write about needing to be brave in a scary world. Loving your family no matter what. Girls who are stronger than they think.”

The fact that these powerful plays are performed in front of a gala audience proves their worth in the community. Wright would like to see every school take part in this program. It has grown from the Touchstone Theatre stage to Diamond Theatre and the larger Baker Hall at Zoellner Arts Center.

“It’s great theater and it’s great fun,” says Wright. “It’s in support of an amazing program that lets kids know that the world cares and the world is listening to them. They can see something from a germ of an idea to completion right before their eyes. It is truly fantastic to see what can happen when kids see adults take them seriously.”

Tickets: touchstone.org, 610-867-1689