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ach spring, high school students from around New England submit original, 10-minute plays to Trinity Rep’s Write Here! Write Now! playwriting competition. Each script is considered through a blind evaluation process by Trinity Rep staff and local writers, and every student receives feedback from multiple adjudicators, including specific notes around how to continue growing as a writer. Once the highest scoring plays are identified, a smaller roundtable of artists, writers, and educators discusses the merits of each play and advocates for their personal favorites. At the end of this thoughtful process, four plays are chosen as winners while another two to three are chosen as honorable mentions. While winning comes with the pride of being chosen from a large pool of talented writers, the process doesn’t end there. Dramaturgs at Trinity Rep work directly with the four winners for by Bradly Widener a few weeks to strengthen their plays even more. Finally, each play is assigned a director and professional actors, and in a whirlwind couple of days, the plays are rehearsed and brought to life for a staged reading. Because of the current constraints around in-person performances, this year’s plays were produced virtually as a part of Trinity Rep’s digital series The Writer’s Room on May 11. In addition, each playwright received a scholarship towards a Young Actors Studio after-school class at Trinity Rep and 20 free tickets to a Project Discovery student matinee for their school. While the competition was stiff, four submissions rose to the top this year: Purple by Ramona Boyd, The Lincoln School, Providence, RI; The Ally’s Burden by Tosin George, Cranston HS East, Cranston, RI; Fights by Charlie Boucher, La Salle Academy, Cranston, RI; and Anyways by Philip Byrnes, Dighton Rehoboth HS, Dighton, MA. Additionally, our honorable mentions were: In G-d’s Eyes by Samantha Brower, The Lincoln School, Providence, RI; Scratched by Bedros Kevorkian, Cranston HS East, Cranston, RI; and What I Do at Night by KK Eydenberg, Applewild School, Groton, MA. We were fortunate enough to speak with the winners this year to learn a bit more about who these four upcoming young playwrights are and what drives them to write. Bradly Widener: How did you all learn about Write Here! Write Now! and what made you want to submit your plays? Ramona Boyd: A teacher at my school, Ms. D-O, whom I adore, asked me if I wanted to enter.
Charlie Boucher: I wish I had a more profound answer than hearing about it on Instagram, but I heard about it on Instagram. I have been writing for a while, but I am always hesitant to put my work out there. I figured submitting would just be a good “rip off the band-aid” moment for me and my writing. Philip Byrnes: I learned about it from my advanced theater arts class. I wanted to share this story with others. Tosin George: I believe I learned about Write Here! Write Now! through the Trinity Rep Instagram account which prompted me to go on the Trinity Rep website and learn more about it. I wanted to submit my play because I entered last year, and the feedback I received really helped me improve my playwriting skills. Also, the Write Here! Write Now! competition gave me the motivation to start working on and developing my play. BW: What was your inspiration when writing your plays? RB: “Wine mom humor” is very strange, because on the surface it’s very chipper but, to me, the jokes have always read as existential crises. Roko’s basilisk, a theory that was conceived on the Internet, is also existentially horrific, and I thought it was interesting that two vastly different kinds of content could a) have something in common and b) coexist on the Internet, so I tried to find a way to link them. (I think I should note that this character is in no way based on my actual mom, who is extremely cool.) PB: High school experience, my friends, and coming of age. CB: Having to write something with a specific length was a good opportunity to develop and synthesize a lot of half-developed ideas in my head. I had a good amount of funny one-liners or turns of phrase, but no real plot. I was trying to connect those dots, but at that time things were happening in my life that forced me to think about my own future. I get overwhelmed at the idea of making decisions, which can make my attitude pretty pessimistic. So, I am trying to write something, but all these problems are on my mind. But, these are intangible problems, and I realized that something about the search for tangible solutions to intangible problems seemed funny. I started working with that, utilizing some other weird moments or ideas I had jotted down over time. So, this “morphing” ended up in a place that I liked, and from there I just had to rewrite a bit to be clear enough to make the piece make sense to people who are not me. TG: My inspiration for writing my play was a multitude of things. We are living in a very strange, unprecedented, and important time not just in American history but also in human history. The intersection of the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the racial revelations and reckonings
Tenth Ann Write Hereiversary Celebrate ! Write Now! s Young Ta lent
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THE TRINITY SQUARE • SPRING 2021
