Playwrighting is a messy business<\/p>\n
Petty, who attends Philadelphia Virtual Academy, learned that dreaming up a play is easy. The hard part is making it coherent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea is always the easiest part because you can just put in a whole bunch of random things,\u201d she said. \u201cBut then it\u2019s trying to turn it into an actual story and make it make sense for anyone else to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
For \u201cWhen Tides Collide,\u201d the 13 teenagers regularly split into small groups for 15-minute writing sessions to work on scenes. The groups sometimes devolved into excited chatter about anything and everything except the play.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just feed off of each other\u2019s energy,\u201d Petty said. \u201cWe\u2019re like, \u2018OK, I think I want to be doing something else right now.\u2019 So, we just make jokes constantly until we end up wasting time. Then we realize we have to get stuff done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Shadow Company works slowly, but with patience and small miracles the script gets written, the blocking gets set, the choreography is learned and the curtain rises.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so amazing, seeing a scene or an idea and being, like, \u2018Wow, I put that in there,\u201d Larson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we first started writing I had just read \u2018Parable of the Sower\u2019 by Octavia Butler, and Gabriele was, like, \u2018Here\u2019s like the prompt for you.\u2019 I was like, \u2018Guys: post-apocalyptic world, new society?\u2019 Seeing how what I said was important and my friends were, like, \u2018We want to take that and run with it.\u2019 That\u2019s what makes it different from just doing a school musical or a theater camp.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the short term, that collaboration produced a play. Over time, Herrman sees it producing better human beings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIts important to learn how to listen well to people, especially people from whom you may have a very different opinion,\u201d Herrman said. \u201cIt\u2019s also really great for kids to get that experience of: How do you build something as a collective? You have to be taking another idea and be willing to change your idea and see where that can take you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note: This story is part of a series that explores the impact of creativity on student learning and success. WHYY and this series are supported by the Marrazzo Family Foundation, a foundation focused on fostering creativity in Philadelphia youth, which is led by Ellie and Jeffrey Marrazzo. WHYY News produces independent, fact-based news content for audiences in Greater Philadelphia, Delaware and South Jersey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Playwrighting is a messy business Petty, who attends Philadelphia Virtual Academy, learned that dreaming up a play is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1482,14780,69,30779,71,70],"class_list":["post-291447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-creativity-sparks-success","tag-germantown","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-fringe-festival","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}