Annual Young Playwrights' Festival Celebrates 16th Year Of Original Plays By Local Youth

Touchstone Theatre presents the sixteenth year of its acclaimed Young Playwrights' Festival. This showcase of new plays written by local elementary and middle school students will take place on May 22, 2021.

Young Playwrights' Lab is an eight-week arts and literacy residency developed by Touchstone and the Bethlehem Area School District using theatre as a "Trojan Horse" to improve student attitudes toward writing and to provide a platform for creative self-expression. Through theatre improvisation, writing exercises, and collaborative critique, each student writes an original one-act play to be considered for performance in the annual Young Playwrights' Festival. The plays that emerge are a rich indicator of the wide variety and depth of their imaginings, and while they often include wild and whimsical elements like alien creatures, sentient plants and animals, mysterious portals, and magical princesses, their stories include universal themes of family, friendship, bravery, and kindness.

Young Playwrights' Festival typically performs at Zoellner Arts Center's Baker Hall; last year's Festival was held entirely online with concert readings on Zoom, featuring performers from across the country and around the world. After an unusual 2020-21 year of the Young Playwrights' Lab, with classes conducted almost entirely over Zoom, this year's Festival, a "sweet 16" party for the program, will feature a private outdoor event for student playwrights, their families, their teachers, and select invited guests. The evening will include both live and pre-recorded performances of Festival plays as "mini Movies" created by the Touchstone Ensemble. General audiences can enjoy the Festival via livestream on Touchstone's YouTube channel.

From nearly a hundred plays that were submitted from this year's programs, Festival finalists that will be presented in their entirety are The Adventures of Detective Dog and the Case of the Missing Kids by Blaire Hartney of Lincoln Elementary; The Treasurehunters by Antonios Tatakis of Farmersville Elementary; Petunia the Penguin by Maddie Lyons of Spring Garden Elementary; A Time to Remember by Samantha Suarez of Nitschmann Middle; and Luna and Rico Go to the Moon by Emma Huertas of Freemansburg Elementary.

Festival semi-finalists will be presented as short videos, excerpts, and trailers: The Mystical Lizard by Jazanae Jackson of Fountain Hill Elementary; The 1/2 of the Alphabet by Ezerett Frack of Buchanan Elementary; The Plane Crash by Audrey Vargas of Marvine Elementary; The Petter Portal by Lena Booke Blazure of Governor Wolf Elementary; and The Jack and Jill Problem by Dilahliah Gonzalez Simonetly of Donegan Elementary. The Festival performance will also include a reading of "Letters to My February Self" written by middle school young playwrights from Casa Guadalupe Center.

"This year more than any other, the need for self-expression was so important," says Mary Wright, Education Director at Touchstone. "I am so grateful for all of the efforts made by the Teaching Partners at each school and each of the Touchstone Teaching Artists for the extra lengths they went to bring the YPL program to the students. And the students continued to imagine and create in an inspiring way."

On a normal year, the Festival performance is only the first half of the evening, traditionally followed by Touchstone's annual Gala, which raises money through ticket sales, live and silent auctions, and donations to support Touchstone's award-winning arts in education programming. In lieu of the Gala this year, Touchstone is simply accepting donations for support toward next year's programs. Patrons can donate directly at touchstone.org/donate

Touchstone's season is sponsored by RCN. Media sponsorship is provided by WDIY, and print sponsorship is provided by Working Dog Press. The Young Playwrights' Festival Naming Sponsor is Peron Development.

The Young Playwrights' Lab program is gratefully supported through the Educational Improvement Tax Credit Program by: Avalon Insurance Company, Commonwealth Charitable Management, Fidelity Bank, Fulton Bank, Peoples Security Bank and Trust, PPL Electric Utilities, QNB, and UGI Utilities, Inc. and by the following local corporations and foundations: The Dexter F. And Dorothy H. Baker Foundation, Bethlehem Rotary Foundation, Charles H. Hoch Foundation, Just Born, and MCS Industries. The program is also generously supported by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

The 16th Annual Young Playwrights' Festival takes place on Saturday, May 22, 2021, starting at 7:30pm for student playwrights in person, and at 8:30 for general audience joining the livestream. Admission is free of charge, and donations are gratefully accepted at touchstone.org/donate. Links to the live premiere on YouTube will be posted day-of by 12:00pm, on Touchstone's social media and at www.touchstone.org

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