Irondale and SheNYC Arts Launch Plot Program To Bring Local Teens Together To Write And Perform Short Plays In A Single Day

On January 22, Irondale's Young Company and SheNYC Arts' Create Her programs bring local New York City teens together for The 24 (ish) Hour Plays, a digital festival of original short 1-act plays written and produced following a day-long virtual workshop process. The plays, created, rehearsed, and performed in less than 10-hours, will be written based on prompts given by all the participating students and will encompass the issues and concerns they are facing as young people living in New York City. The process, which will be led by the students themselves, will allow audiences to hear the authentic voices of teenagers as they articulate their fears, anxieties, lessons and hopes for the year ahead.

Bringing together students from all over New York City, this pilot program is a unique race-against-time opportunity for teens to embrace the challenge of working alongside new friends in a creative environment and exploring all the components of live theater, from writing, directing, acting, costume and technical design. Kicking off with a virtual writers' workshop on January 9th to learn basic writing techniques and methodology and to begin putting pen to paper, the collective cast of each short play will meet for the first time on zoom on January 22 and spend most of the day preparing for a performance later that evening. With an abridged creative process that is condensed from several months to several hours, audiences will be invited to stream short new works created for the Zoom stage performed for the very first time where anything can (and will) happen! Due to the current the COVID-19 surge, the pilot program will remain completely virtual with plans to bring the program into the Space at Irondale for a live audience later this Spring.

"We are so excited to be collaborating with CreateHER in bringing together creative teens from around NYC to explore the power of storytelling through theater," explains Rima Dodd, Irondale's Director of Education. "Providing teens a space to explore their voice and discuss the world around them through the medium of theater is a crucial part of our mission as a cultural and community institution."

"A key part of our mission at CreateHER is to connect the next generation of theater makers and help foster a collaborative community for young artists," adds Shira Wolf, co-director of CreateHER, the education program of SheNYC Arts. "Teaming up with Irondale, with the shared sole purpose of bringing NYC teens together to create original theater, allows us to expand upon our mission in ways we never imagined four years ago; we couldn't be more thrilled to begin this partnership."

The 24 (ish) Hour Plays festival is both free for students to participate in and viewers to stream.

The 24 (ish) Hour Plays will stream live on January 22, 2022. at 7:00 p.m. on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoKwRfV2bYE

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