2018-19 Resident Playwrights
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Alise Mackey
Grade 11, Strath Haven High School Residency play: HOME Marlena Smith attends her daughter's 18th birthday party after 17 years of being separated from her. Marlena tries to piece together all of the years she missed with her daughter, while also reliving the mistakes she made in the past. Is there any chance that she and her daughter can achieve reconciliation? |
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Andrew Marcus
Grade 8, Cedarbrook Middle School Residency play: THE MURDER OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE When William Shakespeare is plopped into the harsh environment of modern day New York City, he must find a way to fit in. Eventually, he finds out that his life is being threatened by not being in Stratford upon Avon in the 1600’s, and he must seek a way home. Filled with plot twists galore, and lots of mediocre jokes, The Murder of William Shakespeare is sure to please any and all of your weird, old, grumpy uncles. |
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Angelina DeMonte
Grade 9, Harriton High School Residency play: CANDLES The members of the Edgewater High school newspaper club, Rose, Jace, Augustus and Amara are normal high school students, irresponsible, stressed, and feel like they’re wandering through life in no particular direction. But then when the unthinkable happens and their school is attacked by an armed student, their lives are changed forever. After this tragedy, as they try to navigate what comes next, they finally find the passion and drive to fight for something, using what they know best, writing, reporting, and music. |
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Brenden Dahl
Grade 11, Germantown Friends School www.brendendahl.com Residency play: THE GLENNANIKE COLONISTS Upon realizing that his days on Earth are numbered, Charles Coates Junior vows to record the remarkable story of his life: when he was a child, he was sent on a colonist mission to the recently discovered planet Glennanike, along with several other impoverished youth, in order to find alternate habitation for humanity. As time passed, however, their new lives crumbled beneath them as they faced adversity, uncovered shocking secrets, and fell victim to their own humanity. While recounting these events and interacting with the memories he had spent his entire life suppressing, Charles finds it harder than he could have ever imagined to face his own past. The Glennanike Colonists is at once a sci-fi adventure, a coming-of-age story, and a meditation on the nature of human civilization. |
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Cecelia McKinney
Grade 9, Ridley High School Residency play: A Childish Plea Fourteen year old Violet Johnson was killed in a school shooting, but her story doesn’t end there. Violet has returned as a ghost to narrate the story of her past and observe the efforts of the present. In response to Violet’s untimely death, her sister Kara has recruited Violet’s friend Tina, and her friend Natalie to reign down on their local senator and advocate for the ban of bumpstocks nationwide. Follow Violet and Kara on their heart-wrenching journey to find justice, peace, and acceptance. |
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Daniel Dwyer
Grade 11, Lower Merion High School Residency play: Romantic Diversity In The Collapsed Desert Eshet, a U.S. Special Forces operative deployed to Syria to hunt down an American terror network known as the white trinity, finds herself the only survivor of an operation doomed to fail. Now she wanders the vast war-torn Syrian desert with a horse she names Comanche Navajo. While trying to navigate a way out, she finds survivors including a former fighter for ISIL struggling to be himself and a Hazara Shiite struggling to help him and herself, both of who are being hunted down by ISIL for being in love and two men being targeted by the Syrian Government also for being in love. They all merge together and fight for survival and for what they know is right ... or at least mostly Eshet does. Great challenges await to determine the fate of everyone in their efforts to climb and rise out of darkness. |
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Dinah Day-Booth
Grade 10, Harriton High School Residency play: Serendipty? They didn't mean to push him off the roof, but they did. Then, they didn't mean to create fake alibis, tamper with evidence, and steal things, but they did. When one harmless night hanging out on the school's roof turns a little harmful for one person, four teenagers need to cover up a murder, even if they have a test next Thursday and they don't really feel like it. Laugh along with Maci, Falcon, Adrienne, and Austin as they finally recount their (hopefully) most interesting high school story. |
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Dylan Henry
Grade 11, Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts Residency play: INTUITION In this tale of lust and love and the truth into the deeper insight few hold,we follow “Stevie” a self-aware, self-proclaimed witch fall into a infatuation with a boy she feels connected to. We go on the journey with our protagonist of questioning the why and how the two young souls are being pulled together. There is magic in love, in the universe, and in everything. |
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Elena Webber
Grade 11, Science Leadership Academy @ Beeber Campus Residency play: Seconds in Miles A story of worlds colliding with no limitations of time or space; reconnecting through the past and healing through the present... possibly. Cast: 4 Genre : Sci-fi, futuristic, non fiction, drama |
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Esther Kardos
Grade 12, Council Rock High School North Residency play: All Roads Esther Kardos is maybe, possibly, presumably in a definite state of certain death. Join an Addict, a Commie, an Existentialist-Turned-Nihilist, and a Daddy Joke Enthusiast as they put a wacky teenage spin on John Denver's' "Country Roads" in an attempt to search for a girl that probably doesn't want to be found. |
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Guillermo Santos
Residency play: Troublemakers, or something Sex, drugs and rock roll! That's what being young is all about. Unprotected, halucinajetics, and judging people for liking the wrong music, can you name a better life!? Not in this town. Frozen and desolate, and with a good music scene it's the only option you've got. Here, at the brink of adulthood we get a window into a life, one that surrounds us but we usually allow rest on the sidelines. One that survives on the walls on the outsides of parties, the parking lot behind convenience stores and in the heart of anyone who's ever felt antagonized or beligered. Which is to say teenagers. These ones specifically are keeping that lifestyle alive! And after one of them has a run in with the law (not in a cool way) The group unravels and in their own time, each person starts to question who or what they are or do. Light is seeping into the catacombs but it's hurting their eyes. It forces them, and the audience to ask the question we all do, but never want to admit we have, "Is what we care about most, really just a phase?" |
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Kaya Trefz
Grade 11, Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts Residency play: Happy Days Are Here Again A dysfunctional family, a recent death, a Passover dinner? What could go wrong? Come join the Weiss family as they face the effects of loss and begin to heal together. |
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Kim Le
Grade 11,Bayard Rustin High School Residency play: N/A As an author returns home, he discovers that not everything and everyone is as he left it, finding his family coping with the loss of his mother. This intimate play follows the stories of a small town as two former friends explore their past, leading them into their future. It depicts the complexity of relationships and family, emphasizing that the wounds healed by time do not disappear, but rather leave long lasting scars. |
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Kira Wiener
Grade 10,Springfield Township High School Residency play: Sisters/Shattered Marisol is breaking down under the stress of school and the pressure to succeed. Pip is reeling from her best friend’s suicide. These two sisters are unwilling to confide in one another, but when magical-realism-esque places give them the opportunity to open up, they might learn to make something new from their broken pieces. |
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Lily Rivera
Grade 12, Science Leadership Academy Residency play: Z A group of teenage high school students who deal with n amount of societal pressures, come together Breakfast Club Style to think of ways they can not only advocate for themselves, but for others. They fight racism, bigotry, and proper human indecency with man’s best weapons: intelligence, politeness, and perseverance. |
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Maya Jennings
Grade 9, Springfield Township High School Residency play: Long Time Coming This monologue is a piece I recently wrote to describe rage, specifically young rage, directed at the intangible and elusive nature of administration and institutionally based oppression. |
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Niki Schrift
Grade 9, Harriton High School Residency play: Under the Cherry Blossom Tree Under the Cherry Blossom Tree follows the story of two girls as they age, progress through life, and discover their identities in the process. The girls have spent their lives since middle school together, yet there was always a sense of something missing in their relationship. It’s a unique romance, which explores diversity, acceptance, and the hatred in the world. |
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Olivia Bartrand
Grade 12, Lower Merion High School Residency play: Undertows! (working title) Somewhere flat in the United States exists a small town of no importance. However, when the town's pipes break, a 14-year-old resident campaigns to save her town, in the process peeling away its normal exterior to reveal the magic beneath. Armed with a host of eccentric townsfolk, Undertows! reminds its audience members to cherish that which is fleeting and magical. |
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Ruya Erkut
Grade 10, George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science Residency play: The Crush That Crushed Me Robin is starting a new school in 8th grade, and as she starts making friends, she meets a girl named Lina. They become friends, and Robin starts catching feelings. But, come the day of asking her out, Robin gets what she isn’t expecting; rejection. Although sad, Robin gets over it, but Lina doesn’t. She hears from someone that Robin told everyone she was bisexual. Even though Robin thought she was at first, she expressed to anyone who asked about it that she was straight to not cause any drama. Unfortunately, Lina is still angry and starts troubling Robin. From talking behind her back with anyone, or to her face, to even attempting to pull Robin’s chair out from under her, confronting her in the middle of the cafeteria, and cornering Robin in the subway once. Though some of it was physical, it was mostly psychological and verbal bullying, which the principal couldn't control/stop without real proof. After two years, and going to the principal several times, Robin breaks April of freshman year and harms herself. Robin’s classmates knew how Lina was, yet wouldn't do anything to stop it because they pitied Robin but were selfishly relieved it wasn’t them being tortured. Lina was finally stopped after cornering Robin in the subway, but to no avail, because in the end one of them was damaged beyond repair. Since sophomore year has started, there hasn’t been any trouble. Robin will have to wait and see how this year goes, because no matter how far apart they would be, Lina was still the crush that crushed Robin. ...words do hurt, push boundaries, and can change lives and relationships forever. From anyone. |
