Sharpsville Middle School students get involved in theatre early as playwrights

If there’s one thing a group of Sharpsville students learned, it’s never too early to get involved in theatre — not only as cast members or stage hands, but as playwrights.

Eighth-graders Maddox O’Neill, 14, and Adam Arena, 13, collaborated on a play called “Time Trouble” during the last school year in their seventh-grade language arts class, taught by Ira Pataki. As part of the class, the students submitted their plays to the Young Playwrights contest.

“We ended up starting over about a week before it was due, just because the story didn’t seem like it was going anywhere,” O’Neill said.

“Time Trouble,” a play about two high students who use a machine to go back in time for a history class project, was chosen as one of the contest winners in 2018 and ended up being performed at the City Theatre in Pittsburgh.

“I don’t think either of us actually expected to get chosen,” Arena said.

O’Neill and Arena are just the two most recent students from the Sharpsville Area School District to have their plays chosen by the contest. Senior Joseph Bornes, 18, and sophomore Brenna Sposito, 15, had their plays selected in 2014 and 2016, respectively. Bornes’ play, “The Bat Boy,” featured a boy who is transported to the 1960 world series game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Yankees, while Sposito’s play, “The Magic Pencil,” featured two friends whose ancestors were involved in the Salem Witch Trials.

“I collaborated with a friend, Julia Garhart, who moved away since then,” Sposito said. “But we would bounce ideas off each other, and she would handle the big historical parts while I would handle some of the smaller details.”

The Young Playwrights contest is open to students from seventh to twelfth grades from schools throughout western Pennsylvania and northwest Virginia, said Kristen Link, the City Theatre’s Director of Education and Accessibility.

The contest is held in the spring, during which a literary committee of theater professionals go through all of the submissions and select three winners each from the middle school and high school categories, while four plays will receive honorable mentions, Link said.

“In terms of submissions, I’d say we get about 350 to 400 plays a year,” Link said.

But the contest doesn’t end once the winning plays are announced in the spring.

A dramaturg, a theatre employee who acts as an editor, is paired with each student to help refine their plays over the summer. The play is then turned into an onstage production, complete with professional cast and crew — which is shown during the Young Playwrights Festival in the fall, Link said.

“The thing I love the most is when the schools come to the festivals and support their own,” Link said. “They’ll cheer and celebrate their playwrights when the plays are over, and it’s really something different for the students.”

During the summer, the students acquainted themselves with the theatre process, visiting the theater during script readings or rehearsals as well as promoting the Young Playwrights festival over the radio in Pittsburgh. Some of the playwrights even had the chance to meet each other, Bornes said.

“There were some young playwrights who were attending art schools in Pittsburgh and were specifically learning how to write plays, but then I walk in with my Sharpsville hoodie,” Bornes said. “But everyone there was very friendly.”

While there was some mentoring from the professional staff at the City Theatre, the students said they were treated not as children but as equal members of the crew.

“At one point, the theatre’s director pulled me aside and told me, ‘I’m technically the director too, but I’m really just the director for when you’re not here, because this is your vision that we’re trying to bring to life,’” Bornes said.

After the plays ended, the cast and crew held a question-and-answer session, where people in the audience had the chance to speak with the young playwrights.

“Some of the questions didn’t have anything to do with the play. There was one kid who asked me what it was like going to Pittsburgh,” O’Neill said.

In Sharpsville Middle School, Pataki offers the program in his seventh-grade language arts class, which is also involved in the Young Playwrights residency program.This program allows an artist from the City Theatre to spend time in the class and work with the students in developing their plays.

“So far we’ve had three different artists over the years and they’ve all been fantastic, with Sharpsville kids winning the contest during each artist’s time with us,” Pataki said. “We’re also really lucky here to have an administration that’s always been very supportive of the program.”

Learning to write a play script was a learning curve for the students, who said previous writing assignments could be around two to three pages long, while a play could be around 25 pages. However, the students said the real issue was trying to contain their stories to a one-act play.

“There were times you would have to cut scenes because you’d come up with so many ideas when you were trying to write the play,” Sposito said.

Fellow student Sarah Parry, 18, submitted her play “Illegal Aliens” earlier this spring. Even though her play wasn’t a contest winner, Parry said she plans to resubmit the play again in the future after editing and reworking some aspects of the story.

“Even when they don’t accept it, the judges still send back criticism to try and make it better, like with mine they suggested more character development since my story only has four characters,” Parry said.

In Parry’s story, aliens from outer space attempt to immigrate to Earth. Even though the story is science fiction, Parry said she wanted to cover a real-life topic of people trying to immigrate legally and illegally, as well as the meeting and interaction of similar yet different cultures.

“I wanted to try and cover a serious issue, but write it in such a way that younger kids would understand it,” Parry said.

And there’s no reason for students to give up trying, said the previous young playwrights.

“Don’t ever not submit a play because you don’t think it’s a good idea,” O’Neill said.

“No idea’s a bad idea,” Sposito said.