Greek gods masquerading as teenagers... slaves running to freedom... a girl who dresses as a boy to fight in the Civil War... a land populated by vegetables and fruits and one giant Vegetarian... and a couple of kids who fall in love, only to discover one goes to Capulet High School and the other to Montague High.

The 2012 Young Playwrights are here! Tomorrow the curtain goes up on the amazing imaginations of Rahel Bakke, Anthony Garcia, Jessica Lee, Lydia Purcell, Andy Ngo, and Deja Sopher-Frazier.

Join us and see their plays brought to life by actors Kathya Alexander, Andrew Creech, Quiqui Domingue, Drew Hobson, Tamara Koltes, Phillip Lomax, Amelia Meckler, Matthew Middleton, and Kaila Towers-Thomas.

The adventures begin!

4pm, Thursday, June 14 - One day only, at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center in Columbia City.
3515 S. Alaska, on the NW corner of S. Alaska and Rainier Avenue South.

Special thanks to Maggie Cain, Robbie Gandy and Kristin Nichols, our fabulous classroom teaching partners!

Young Playwrights Festival 2012

Thursday, June 14 at 4:00 pm at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center

New plays from South Shore School and Mercer Middle School

in staged readings with professional actors

Special Preview on Tuesday, June 12, at 4pm at Columbia City’s Bookworm Exchange!

The 2012 SEEDArts’ Young Playwrights Festival features professional actors performing the best student plays culled from spring classes at Mercer Middle School and South Shore School. The plays tackle tough topics and otherworldly ideas, explore the Civil War and Greek history, in ways that are funny, moving and smart. A question and answer session with the student playwrights follows the performance.

Student playwrights have worked on the craft of playwriting all spring, in an in-school arts residency taught by drama professionals. Through writing and performance exercises, each student develops, writes and revises his or her own one-act play. Students’ plays are then read by a panel of theatre professionals, and the best are selected for staged readings.

Professional actors bring these plays to life on stage at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center. Each year brings surprises and delights – last year, a re-imagined version of The Wizard of Oz brought down the house, and students are still talking about it. This year, plays are filled with themes of freedom and independence.

Thanks to the Washington State Arts Commission and Fales Foundation, the 2012 festival features a new community preview! On Tuesday, June 12, Columbia City’s Bookworm Exchange hosts a special set of preview readings. Student actors will join with professionals to share excerpts of exceptional plays.

Drew Hobson, RVYT Teaching Artist at South Shore, states:  “I got to tell one of my playwriting students that I believe in him. He kept insisting that he doesn't have an imagination. And I told him (and then the whole class) that I grew up in the Central District. Gangs, drugs, shootings, I've seen it all. But I had someone when I was their age show me how to use my imagination to free myself from my surroundings. That's why I LOVE doing what I do, having the chance to tell them if I did it, so can they. I could see on his face and in the rest of the class that I was getting across to them. Encouraging a child's imagination unlocks an infinite amount of doors in their future. ‘I believe in you’: four words that can change a child's life."

Calendar Information:

RVYT’s Young Playwrights Festival 2012

WHEN: Thursday, June 14, 4pm

WHERE: Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 S. Alaska St., Seattle, WA 98118

Tickets: Free or $5 suggested donation

Bookworm Exchange Preview Reading -

Tuesday, June 12 at 4pm

Ticket Information: (206) 725-7517

http://www.seedseattle.org/seedarts or http://rvytcamp.blogspot.com/

  

Rainier Valley Youth Theatre is a program of SouthEast Effective Development (SEED). SEEDArts and the Young Playwrights Program are supported this year by Washington State Arts Commission, 4Culture, and Fales Foundation.

Young Playwrights are HERE!! YPF Tomorrow at RVCC - May 22, 4pm!

Calling all South Seattle folks! Come on down to the Rainier Valley Cultural Center tomorrow for the 2010 Young Playwrights Festival! We have six amazing, funny, moving, inspiring plays for you!

South Shore School Plays:

Ninjas by Elizabeth Wong

The Running Cat by Celia Huddart

Rainier Beach HS Plays:

Welcome Home by Tavia Silas

Love or Hate But We Are Family by Maria M. Soledad Barrientos

Truth To Be Told by T’Ra Watts

Love That Backfires by Jaquer Baker

Students at South Shore School and Rainier Beach High School worked with Teaching Artists Drew Hobson and Maria Glanz for 10 classroom sessions, learning the craft of playwriting and each creating her or his own short play. These plays were read by a panel of theatre and arts professionals, and the six plays you see today were selected as the most promising. We thank our Reading Panel: Kathya Alexander, Rich deLorme, Drew Hobson, Maria Glanz, Jerri Plumridge, and Laurie Rose.

We offer Special Thanks to both South Shore School and Rainier Beach High School, for hosting this program that invites and supports young writers in developing their powerful imaginations. We especially thank our amazing classroom teachers:

Kate Eads at South Shore School and Brooke Linefsky at RBHS

for their dedication and heart—they were wonderful teaching partners!

Rainier Valley Youth Theatre and Rainier Valley Cultural Center are supported by the Washington State Arts Commission and 4Culture. The 2010 Young Playwrights Program was supported by Fales Foundation, PONCHO, and the Jeffris Wood Foundation, and was a proud partner in the Rainier Beach HS Theatre Arts Collaborative.

The Young Playwrights Are Coming!

The Young Playwrights Festival is 3 weeks away - and it is going to be a knock-out. Every year I am amazed and moved at the plays turned out by these southeast Seattle middle and high school students - they tackle some of the toughest topics imaginable, in ways that are brutal, funny, moving and smart. Playwriting classes have been going all spring at South Shore and Rainier Beach High School, and in just a few weeks Seattle's coolest actors will bring the very best plays to life.

So get your calendars out and SAVE THIS DATE:

Saturday, May 22 - 4pm

Rainier Valley Cultural Center
3515 S. Alaska - SW corner of Rainier and Alaska, in Columbia City

See you there!

a note from Drew Hobson, now teaching at South Shore School...

One of RVYT's amazing teachers, Drew Hobson, just wrote this about his residency at South Shore School:

"Today I got to tell one of my playwrighting students that I believe in him. He Kept Insisting that he doesn't have an Imagination. And I told him (and then the whole class) that I grow up in the Central Distric too. Gangs, Drugs, Shootings, I've seen it all. But I had someone when I was their age show me how to use my Imagination to Free myself from my surroundings. That's why I LOVE doing what I do, having the chance to tell them if I did it, so can they. I could see on his face, and the rest of the class that I was getting across to them. If that's all they walk away with from my class, then I've Succeeded. Encouraging a Child's Imagination Unlocks an Infinite Amount of Doors in their Future. And "I Believe in you", Four Words That Can Change A Child's Life."

Young Playwrights! Stories are unfolding...

RVYT is currently teaching playwriting residencies at Rainier Beach High School and South Shore School. Teaching Artists Maria Glanz and Drew Hobson are leading students through the creation of characters, settings, plots and conflicts - and from the look of some first scenes, these plays are going to rock!

SAVE THE DATE:
The Rainier Valley Youth Theatre Young Playwrights Festival will take place on Saturday, May 22, at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center, a program of SEEDArts. The YPF features professional actors performing the best student plays written during playwriting residencies held this spring at Rainier Beach High School and South Shore School. Student plays are read by a panel of theatre professionals, and the best are selected to be performed in staged readings. A question and answer session with the featured student playwrights follows the performance.

SummerSTAGE 2009 - Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home

SummerSTAGE 2009:
Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home
by William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. (Assiniboine)

Rainier Valley Youth Theatre, a program of SEEDArts, provides theatre training for Seattle youth with professional artists. Our SummerSTAGE productions are unique in youth theatre, often featuring national premieres of work by prominent playwrights, performed by an incredible array of diverse local youth.

In 2009, we partner with Red Eagle Soaring Native American Youth Theatre. Pictured are Red Eagle Soaring youth Jacob Braxton and Dallas Pinkham, who are joined by a diverse cast of young Seattle actors including Red Eagle Soaring student Roberta (Birdie) Sam. We are proud to present the NW Premiere of Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home, a contemporary, abstract play by our country’s foremost Native American playwright, William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. (Assiniboine).

Calendar Information:
Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home

Performance Days & Times:
Thursdays – Saturdays; July 23, 24, 25, 30, 31, August 1; 7:30pm

Location: Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 S. Alaska St., Seattle, WA 98118

Tickets: $7 Students & Seniors, $10 Adults

Information & Reservations: (206) 725-7169

Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, writes: "Bill Yellow Robe's voice is funny, honest, and searing. He tells painful truths that are designed to heal, and healing truths that are hard to hear. He writes from an utterly specific Native world, one we all need to know, but he uncovers human truths that are universal and profound. He is one of our necessary writers. We would be much poorer without him."

Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home is an intensely contemporary theatre piece that explores Native identity and mixed heritage through the psychological journey of main character Adam. Encouraged by close conversations with the author, RVYT sets the play in our own Seattle home, envisioning Adam as a member of a Coast Salish tribe. Through wry, sharp interactions with groups including the Chorus of Academia and Chorus of Governance, as well as lost family members and the Trickster himself, this poignant play casts a sharp look at the institutions, people, and legacies that help and hamper a Native reclaiming his heritage.

The all-teen cast has rehearsed for six weeks to present this challenging work, which also features video and multi-media projection art by Native Lens and Longhouse Media. Cast members include Jacob Braxton, Roberta Sam, and Dallas Pinkham of Red Eagle Soaring, as well as many other Rainier Valley youth. The artistic staff includes costumer Francisca Garcia, scenic designer Cooper Lanza, choreographer Danny Long, director Tyrone Brown, advisor Martha Brice of Red Eagle Soaring, and producer Maria Glanz. Performances run July 23 – August 1.

Rainier Valley Youth Theatre is a program of SouthEast Effective Development (SEED). RVYT and the Rainier Valley Cultural Center are supported by the contributions from the Washington State Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, 4Culture. SummerSTAGE 2009 is supported by the Beth Jean Schneider Memorial Scholarship Fund.


Notes from Red Eagle Soaring:
William S. Yellow Robe, Jr. is a long-time friend of Red Eagle Soaring, having helped as dramaturg in the creation of our first play, Story Circles, in 1991/92, and served on our Advisory Committee since that time. We are honored to participate in the production of his play Pieces of Us, contributing advice, props, and best of all, three of our student actors. We are so proud of them for the fine work they have done and the commitment they have made to the project. In a recent conversation with Mr. Yellow Robe, he said that his wish for this play was to anchor the heritage of the leading character of Adam in the community of Native people in which the play is produced, and with a tribe that has had difficulty maintaining their cultural connections over the years. Thus, we advised the RVYT to choose advisers, cultural references and traditional elements in the play from among the Coast Salish people and traditions. RVYT have done that to the best of their ability. It is our hope that the Duwamish people and the other Coast Salish Nations around us will welcome and be honored by this effort.

Calendar Information:
Pieces of Us: How the Lost Find Home

Performance Days & Times:
Thursdays – Saturdays; July 23, 24, 25, 30, 31, August 1; 7:30pm

Location: Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 S. Alaska St., Seattle, WA 98118

Tickets: $7 Students & Seniors, $10 Adults

Information & Reservations: (206) 725-7169

Rainier Valley Youth Theatre – Artist Biographies

William S. Yellow Robe, Jr., SummerSTAGE Playwright, is an enrolled member of the Assiniboine Tribe, located on the Fort Peck Indian reservation in northeastern Montana. He has a body of work that includes fifty plays, several short stories and poetry. “Grandchildren of the of the Buffalo Soldiers and Other Untold Stories,” is a new collection of his full-length plays published by UCLA’s Project HOOP. He is a recipient of the New England Theater Conference Award for Excellence, the First Book Award for Drama from the Gathering of Nations Conference, and the first playwright to receive a Princess Grace Award for theater. He is an actor and a director. William is a Adjunct Faculty member of the English Department at the University of Maine, in Orono, Maine, and is a Faculty Affiliate of the Creative Writing Department at the University of Montana. His most recent play, “Thieves: In the red way,” was presented in a staged reading by Amerindian at the Public Theater in New York.

Tyrone Brown, SummerSTAGE Director, is well known locally as the leader of BROWNBOX Theatre, an African American theatre that has been resident at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center since 2002. Tyrone directed several successful productions at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center including Black to My Roots in 2001 (which was a Fringe First Award winner at the 2002 Edinburgh Festival in Scotland); Hamlet X (chosen as by the Seattle Times as one of the best theatre Shakespeare productions in 2005) and Wreck the Airline Barrier (2006). Tyrone holds a Bachelors of Arts in Theatre from Western Washington University, Performing Arts Management Certificate from the University of Washington (Extension Program), and is currently working toward his MFA in Arts Leadership at Seattle University.

Maria Glanz, SummerSTAGE Producer, is a playwright, performer, director, educator and producer. She has worked in Seattle, San Diego, and Hawaii. She was recently Artistic Director for Playwrights Project in San Diego, before moving back to her long-time home of Seattle. She served as Artistic Director of Rainier Valley Youth Theatre from 2003 to 2007. Maria has taught for Seattle Children's Theatre, Youth Theatre Northwest, Hawaii's Alliance for Drama Education, and several schools and produced the RVYT SummerSTAGE productions of The Tempest, Reunion, Ola Na Iwi, Angkor / America, and DREAM’N.

Martha Brice (adopted-Tlingit, Eagle moiety, 1996), founding Board member and volunteer with Red Eagle Soaring Theatre Group from 1991 to the present. Martha’s experience and expertise has encompassed all of Red Eagle Soaring’s activities over the years. Since 1984 she has been a volunteer free-lance producer of multi-cultural theatre projects, especially those with peace and social justice themes, including Word of Mouth: Women Reading and Singing for Peace; Most Dangerous Women, a dramatized history of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; Breaking the Silence, a docu-drama of Japanese American history; and the annual Seattle peace event, From Hiroshima to Hope. For these activities she has received awards from Physicians for Social Responsibility (2008) and the Aki Kurose Peace and Social Justice Award (2004).

Red Eagle Soaring is a non-profit Youth Theatre Program that serves Native American and Alaskan Native youth in the Pacific Northwest. The group’s mission is to “empower American Indian and Alaskan Native Youth through traditional and contemporary theatre arts”, and they have done just that for the past 18 years. RES currently produces a year-round series of drama and cultural workshops and performance projects, including an original play production every Spring, a Fall Skills Workshop Series, and a two-week intensive drama workshop in the summer. Through the inspired work of the many teaching artists, playwrights, and directors that have been brought together to teach them, and the dedication of mentors and volunteers, students grow in self-confidence and self-discipline, empathy and compassion, communication skills, teamwork, curiosity and creative expression. RES is grateful for support from the City of Seattle Human Services Department, the Potlatch Fund, the Muckleshoot, Tulalip, Puyallup and Lummi tribes, and Safeco Foundation.