Youth Council Member and Student Playwright
Angela Antoinette Bey won the National Constitution Center's first ever Founding Freedoms Essay & Playwriting Contest, sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.

Angela and the cast are pictured to the left on opening night!

Her four actor play imagines how Mrs. Elizabeth Willing Powel and the citizens of Philadelphia reacted to Benjamin Franklin’s advice that “you” the citizen is ultimately responsible for upholding the principles of the new government.  This play was directed by PYP Resident Director, David O'Connor.

Listen to her interview on KYW, below, then check out Angela's play at the National Constitution Center throughout July 2015! Call for showtimes - 215.409.6600

The Dangerous House of Pretty Mbane ran Jan 16- Feb 8, 2015 at Interact Theatre Company


By Kai Burton
Student Playwright at Science Leadership Academy

This is the second time I have had the opportunity to write a play with the help of Philly Young Playwrights, and I find myself running into the same problem. The challenge that I face is that I keep adding in characters that represent small roles in my story, and that I don’t really need. After seeing The Dangerous House of Pretty Mbane I got a better idea of how to portray the roles of my smaller characters without putting physical bodies on stage. “The Dangerous House of Pretty Mbane” was a deep story about a topic that, unfortunately, still impacts a lot of people today, corrective rape. The setting of the play was mostly in South Africa during the World Cup, meaning that there would be a lot of people around, a lot of noise, and a lot of celebration. Silverman was able to get all that across, using only six actors, which I thought to be the most amazing part of the play. Some of the most important people in the play we never seen, but shown through letters and phone calls.

The It Gets Better Workshop
by Emma O’Neill-Deitel (Julia R. Masterman High School/10th Grade) 
PYP Youth Council Member and previous 1st place winner of our Annual Playwriting Festival  

Two weeks ago, I attended the It Gets Better workshop at the Kimmel Center, as a representative of PYP. The It Gets Better project is a multimedia campaign that exists to spread the word to LGBTQ youth that they are not alone, and that their situation will get better. It also promotes changes that can be made in communities to make sure that life does get better for LGBTQ people. The workshop I attended was part of a series of workshops all over the country led by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, in which members of the chorus facilitate a discussion and video-making workshop to promote the It Gets Better message. The other students in the workshop were from the Attic Youth Center, an organization for Philadelphia’s LGBTQ teens and their allies.

We began the workshop by introducing ourselves and our organizations. I was very proud to represent PYP and it was interesting to hear about the Gay Men’s Chorus of LA and the Attic Youth Center, neither of which I had been familiar with prior to the workshop. After the introductions, we broke into small groups and talked about what message we would like to convey to other LGBTQ teens. We then shared what we had discussed and made an outline for what we wanted to include in the video. After we had come up with a general idea, we wrote individual statements, which we filmed. We also wrote and filmed segments that we performed as a group. The experience of creating such a spontaneous piece (we did all this in just two hours!) reminded me of a similar process we often follow in PYP workshops, which has taught me that on-the-spot performances are some of the best.

This summer, two Young Playwrights students had the fantastic opportunity to travel to California to participate in The LEAP Foundation conferences.

The LEAP Foundation, Inc. (“LEAP”) was formed in 2008 as a California not-for-profit corporation. LEAPsponsors six-day conferences designed to teach leadership skills to participating students, aged 15 to 24, in small groups under the guidance of the conference faculty and individual coaches.

LEAP encourages students to take great strides toward achieving their dreams and to “LEAP” ahead in life – academically, professionally and personally – in ways they may not have even been able to foresee.

Young Playwrights’ students are able to go thanks to the Matt Stuski Scholarship, which was started in memory of Board Member Nancy Stuski’s son, Matt, who was close friends with LEAP founder, Tony Granados.

Youth Council Member Gina Dukes reflected upon her experience: