Student plays featured at regional festival

Springfield High School theater students performed seven plays in the SHS auditorium on Thursday as part of an entirely student-directed, -performed, and -written theater showcase.

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2017-05-27 / Front Page Print article Print Student plays featured at regional festival Student written, directed, and performed works at theater showcase By KELSEY CHRISTENSEN kchristensen@eagletimes.com Springfield High School Senior Marcus Allen poses for a photo at the high school auditorium, where his play, "Ventriloquist," was performed Thursday evening. — KELSEY CHRISTENSEN Springfield High School Senior Marcus Allen poses for a photo at the high school auditorium, where his play, "Ventriloquist," was performed Thursday evening. — KELSEY CHRISTENSEN SPRINGFIELD, Vt. — Springfield High School theater students performed seven plays in the SHS auditorium on Thursday as part of an entirely student-directed, -performed, and -written theater showcase. Two 10-minute one-acts staged at Thursday’s showcase — “Welcome to the Afterlife” by Ainsley Bertone, an SHS junior, and “Ventriloquist” by Marcus Allen, an SHS senior — were selected as finalists at the Weston Young Playwright festival. The Weston Young Playwright Festival takes place in Burlington each year at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts. Weston’s festival, which took place on May 10, allows young playwrights in the southern region of Vermont to workshop their writing. Rebecca Skrypeck is the theater director and English teacher at Springfield High School. In addition to directing seasonal plays, hosting this year’s statewide scholastic theater festival, and teaching a full schedule of Language Arts courses, Skrypeck encouraged her students to submit their plays to the festival this past spring. Piper Goodeve, Weston’s educational director, read the 40 plays that were submitted from throughout southern Vermont, selecting six to ultimately be workshopped with professional screenwriter Ashlin Halfnight, a writer for the Netflix series “Bloodline,” in between his shooting schedule for the show. “Six plays were honored by being selected,” Goodeve said. “But we really consider them all to be a work in progress. Students are encouraged to go back and rewrite, even after the festival.” Following a series of workshops, students improved their scripts before a mixture of professional and local actors performed their works on May 10, giving the students an opportunity to hear their plays aloud, sometimes for the first time. Halfnight performed a Q&A with the students after the festival, to ask them questions about what they learned, and what worked or didn’t work in the plays. This is the fifth year the SHS theater department has participated in the event. “We’ve been doing the festival since its inception,” Skrypeck said. However, this is the first year the Weston Young Playwright program will be affiliated with July’s three-day Bookstock Literary Festival in Woodstock. There, the students’ plays will be performed as staged readings once more. Thursday’s showcase gave students an opportunity to cast, direct, and produce the work they wrote for the showcase on their own terms. “This has been the second time I have taken plays written through the Weston Young Playwright's Workshop and presented them in a showcase,” Skrypeck said. “It gives all of the students who wrote a play the chance to put them on their feet.” Allen’s play, “Ventriloquist,” focuses on a man’s struggle with multiple personality disorder, which is externalized through the character’s use of puppets to represent different personalities. “It was inspired by that episode of Goosebumps about the dummy that comes to life,” Allen said. Allen plans to attend the Community College of Vermont in the fall, after which he hopes to attend Johnson State College for four years. “I’ve always been interested in writing, but it wasn’t until I participated in the Governor’s Institute for the Arts that I realized I should pursue it as a career,” he said. “I want to write everything — books, another play, a collection of short stories. But my favorite writing is probably poetry.” Bertone’s play focuses on three people that find themselves in the afterlife, but relies on absurdist humor. “I wanted to create something I knew people would laugh at,” Bertone said. “It gives people a time to relax and not care about what’s going on.” Bertone is only a junior, but she wants to pursue musical theater in college after she graduates next year. Bertone participated in the festival last year, but this was the first year her play was selected. “It was an amazing experience,” Bertone said. “Not only because you get to see your work portrayed by a professional director, but because you get to meet people with similar interests as you.” Bertone’s biggest challenge as a writer, she says, was sticking to one script. “You think you have a good idea, and you write half a play” she said. “But then you get a better idea and you trash the whole thing.” https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgurec0SzOGb9JpjHvfUt7lOmt3eWVG5rcpcdgMMXC45B76kQ9ZnOvVS-0vgpa1uPiOK_1urjl14SuFrr-FmM9hzVSTvq83tKvLW7ZAYm6emtyr8zFGmQbY-5XNuABQsqXVJqKgrujQX3s/s1600/Marcus_Allen-.jpg" />