Long Story Short play fest: helping youth explore their creativity and find their voice

Melissa Schenter, Program Development Specialist

The Long-Story-Short Play Festival came from a collaboration between myself and Northwest Children’s Theater’s Outreach Coordinator, Jessica Zodrow. We loved the idea of staging original work written by BGC members, focusing less on spectacle and theatricality, and focusing more on featuring their creative voices.

In January 2016, Jessica trained staff from three different BGCP sites—along with a handful of incredible volunteer theatre educators—to prepare them to run the program in our clubs. Through improvisation, character creation exercises, and writing prompts, our kids have been working over the past 9 weeks to write their own plays and monologues.

This program is an opportunity for our members to strengthen their literacy skills in a fun and imaginative way. In addition, I hope that our members will feel empowered artistically, and realize their value and potential as creative individuals. I hope they’ve gained another tool with which they can express themselves and communicate with the world around them.

“It was amazing. I had a really fun time, and I would do it again. It was surprising how much stuff I could create.”

-Nebiyu Salah, age 14, Wattles Club Member.