Grand Canyon School student featured playwright at festival
PRESCOTT, Ariz. - The Prescott Center for the Arts (PCA) will feature eight original short plays selected as winning entries in the third annual Young Playwrights Festival (YPF) set for March 3.
A team of veteran PCA directors rehearsed eight casts that will take the PCA stage to perform a 2 p.m. matinee and a 6 p.m. evening show.
According to Jon Meyer, PCA executive director and YPF Committee member, this year's festival features winning entries from outside Yavapai County.
"This year we expanded the entry zone from just Yavapai County to include towns in Coconino County as well and ended up with winner Hailey Gaebel, who is a student at Grand Canyon School," he said. "It's exciting to see YPF grow and expand with more and more entries each year."
The 2013 YPF play line-up offers audiences a cross section of genres from the K-12 playwrights. Among the featured works are dramas dealing with physical challenges and mental health issues, comedies about office workers, wing-challenged insects, sibling rivalries, Shakespearean spoofs and a Greek tragedy staged as a melodrama. The winning playwrights include two elementary school students, two middle school students and four high school students.
Gaebel's play, "The Inner Monster," is about the visions of a schizophrenic woman who, after killing five people because monsters told her to, is sentenced to death.
Years later, the woman's daughter realizes she is also schizophrenic and begins to see the same monsters. After visiting her therapist, the daughter makes a terrifying discovery.
The play took a week to write and three weeks to revise. Gaebel wrote outside of school and on her own time.
"The goal of YPF is multi-purpose," said Tiffany Antone, 2013 festival coordinator. "It was implemented to promote literacy and the arts. We encourage students from the public schools and charter schools, as well as the home schooled, to explore play writing as a creative outlet. The winning playwrights are given the opportunity to work with directors as they see their works come to life during the rehearsal and performance process. We see it as a way to encourage a whole new generation of live theatre lovers."
Tickets are $7 and are available at the door. More information is available at (928) 445-3286.
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