Philadelphia Young Playwrights
How can plays that students write be taken out of the classroom to an ongoing practice in this young person's life, even if they don’t go on to be a playwright?
The staged reading shown here expresses deep and personal feelings about loss and grief. This student was encouraged by Philadelphia Young Playwrights to express these feelings through playwriting. Even if they don’t go on to write more plays, writing this and seeing their work enacted can be a form of emotional healing through the arts. This shows students that the arts can be a way to confront difficult emotions, which they can take with them as an ongoing practice in their lives.
“Our mission of centering student voices is embodied in both curricular structure and relational interactions at every juncture of our residencies. This means not only engaging each student individually and co-creating ways for them to explore their agency as an artist and a learner, but also layering in strategies for the students to explore this as a classroom community and co-create a learning environment that is authentically engaging and empowering to them. As arts educators who focus on tailoring experiences for both our schools and our individual student learners, we center the goals of our partners and our playwrights and let them guide us in terms of how we observe, affirm, and give feedback. That's true both inside and outside of the classroom.”
-Philadelphia Young Playwrights