Keen Company Names 'Keen Teens 2012 Writers'

Keen Teens, the educational Theatre Partnership between Off-Broadway's Keen Company and the publishing company Playscripts, Inc. has selected the writers for the program's sixth season. Michael Mitnick, Janine Nabers, and Kathryn Walat have been commissioned to write thirty minute, large cast plays, which will be produced with student actors Off-Broadway in May 2012.

Keen Teens is a unique educational theatre program which seeks to improve the quality of plays written for high school students by commissioning scripts from highly regarded professional writers. The playwrights' only guidelines are that the plays be 30 minutes in length, involve a large cast, and reflect Keen Company's mission of producing plays that are generous in spirit and provoke identification. Keen Teens then casts high school students from the tri-state area to perform in the World Premiere productions of these plays at Off-Broadway's Theatre Row. Playscripts, Inc publishes the plays, which have already garnered over 162 performances around the globe.

In its first five seasons, Keen Teens produced plays by Courtney Baron, Barton Bishop, Bekah Brunstetter, Bathsheba Doran, Anton Dudley, Liz Flahive, Marcus Gardley, Jason Grote, Naomi Iizuka, Greg Kotis, Mike Lew, Cheri Magid, Winter Miller, Qui Nguyen, Ryan Pavelchik, and Jenny Schwartz.

This year's performances will be May 18th through 20th, 2012 at the Lion Theatre at Theatre Row.

High school students from the tri-state area interested in participating in Keen Teens can audition at Theatre Row Studios, 410 West 42nd Street, on Tuesday January 31st (3:30-6:30pm), Wednesday February 1st (3:30-5pm), and Friday February 3rd (3:30-6:30pm). For more info about auditions, contact program administrator Blake Lawrence at keenteenstheatre@gmail.com

For more information, go to www.keencompany.org/teens.