Oregon Children's Theatre Names Winners of Young Playwrights for Change Contest

Oregon Children's Theatre (OCT) has announced the winner and finalists of their third Young Playwrights for Change playwriting contest. The winning scripts will be performed in a staged reading on April 25th at 7:30pm at the Winningstad Theatre in downtown Portland. The event is free and open to the public, but general seating can be reserved by calling the OCT Box Office at 503-228-9571.

Six scripts were selected as finalists for this year's Young Playwrights for Change competition, where middle school students from Oregon and Washington submit original scripts to Oregon Children's Theatre. The winning script also submitted to the national Young Playwrights for Change competition, hosted by Theatre for Young Audiences USA and the American Alliance for Theatre and Education.

In January 2015, OCT staff, along with a reading panel made up of volunteer teachers and Young Professionals, selected the six finalists from among 59 script submissions. This year's topic-"What is Family?"-generated a wide range of plays on topics including gay and lesbian parents, drug and alcohol addiction, poverty, adoption and foster care, blended families, mental health, suicide, racial discrimination, technology, and robots.

OCT's winner is Anjali King, for her play No One is Alone. The play tells the story of a pair of adopted siblings who are bullied by a former friend. When the two families meet to work it out, the teens discover that everyone has their struggles that deserve compassion. King is a 7th grade student at Da Vinci Middle School in Portland.

The other finalists and their plays are:
Azucena Resendiz, Flawless. Highland Park Intermediate, Beaverton, 8th grade
Ainsley Leof, The Box. Da Vinci Middle School, Portland, 6th grade
Anne Dynes, Same Love. Da Vinci Middle School, Portland, 6th grade
Uma Frost-Hausman, Future Family. Da Vinci Middle School, Portland, 6th grade
Agatha Day Olson, The Missing Peace. Metropolitan Learning Center, Portland, 6th grade

The six finalists have had the opportunity to work with playwrights Matthew B. Zrebski and Debbie Lamedman. Zrebski is a multi-award winning playwright, composer, script consultant, teaching artist, and producer-director whose career has been defined by new play development, while Lamedman is known for authoring eight acting books in addition to her many commissioned scripts.

Each finalist received initial email feedback from Zrebski and Lamedman and had the option of doing a revision before OCT decided on the national submission. The playwrights then met with Zrebski or Lamedman in person, and continued to receive mentoring through email. This mentorship offers an important opportunity for the young playwrights to continue revising their plays in preparation for the staged reading of their work. OCT's Young Professionals Company will direct and perform the six plays at the April 25th reading.

"We love this project because it gives kids a voice about issues that are real and immediate to them," says OCT Artistic Director, Stan Foote. "Plus, it offers young writers a chance to work with professionals to hone their craft."

Emphasizing OCT's mission to use theater as an educational tool, all six plays will be available free of charge on the OCT website for teachers to use in their classrooms. Winning scripts from the previous two years are also available for download.

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