Theater of Youth

By Lauren Fritsky
Times Staff Writer

If anyone calls Maria Korostelev a drama queen, it’s for good reason.
The George Washington High School senior isn’t prone to teen temper tantrums, but when poised with a pen, the playwright in her takes center stage.
"I’ve always been really creative," explained Korostelev, 17.
That creativity recently paid off. Maria grabbed a top prize in the Philadelphia Young Playwrights’ annual Playwriting Festival in August. She was joined by classmate Arun Benny, 16, and Northeast High School junior Maneth Pan, 17.
The trio’s plays became real theater last weekend when actors from Temple University performed them for the public as part of New Voices, a program of enhanced workshops run by Playwrights. The students got to work with actors and directors throughout the two-week rehearsal process.
Other local students placed in the contest but didn’t get their plays performed. They include George Washington senior Sherine Matthew and Northeast senior Joel Perez, who won second place, and George Washington seniors Ricky Jabarin and Tatyana Kalko, who won third place.
Philadelphia Young Playwrights, founded in 1984 and incorporated three years later, combines a professional teaching artist with a classroom teacher to guide and support regional students in kindergarten through 12th grades in the process of writing a play. Professional and university theater companies throughout the city play a role by advancing and co-producing performances of those plays.
During the festival, members of the Young Playwrights Literary Committee read each script and provided students with critiques. First-, second- and third-place distinctions are awarded at the elementary, middle and high school levels. More than 800 students submitted plays this year.
"The student winners . . . have given us plays with a stunning variety of topics and styles, and each has displayed remarkable talent and commitment," said Glen Knapp, executive producing director. "They remind us that every young person has something important to say worth listening to."
Korostelev’s 10-minute play, Trains Passing, pairs a privileged suburban twentysomething with a poor, homeless man at a train station. The street-dweller teaches the man a thing or two about what life really means.
Korostelev already had the setting in mind when she sat down to flesh out the play over a six-hour period. Crafting the dialogue, a struggle for many writers, came easy.
"It’s a setting lots of people would relate to," she said. "This would be something that would actually happen (at a train station). I kept writing, and everything just fell into place."
Arun Benny admits that he didn’t put a lot of effort into his play and was shocked that he won. He wrote it mostly to get an extension on an essay assignment for his English class.
"I really needed that extension," he said.
As a play about a nerd and some cool kids who decide to cut school, The Breakthrough portrays the age-old high school theme of standing up to peer pressure.
Benny loved watching his words transform into theater onstage.
"It was great to see the actors and how they do stuff," he said. "They were asking me questions. In the beginning, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. In the end, I think they did a great job."
The George Washington students’ 11th-grade English teacher, Randee Hurvitz, has participated in Young Playwrights since 1989 and brought the program to her school three years later. Playwrights runs from November to May, with students working on different aspects of writing and theater and getting a hand from local professionals.
One of the more remarkable aspects of the playwriting program, she said, is how it draws out students who never thought they could write.
"A lot of (the students) think they’re not writers to begin with," Hurvitz said. "They’re focusing on academic and research writing in class. When they have an opportunity like this, it gives them another option."
At Northeast High, English teacher Theresa Bramwell thought Pan’s first-place win was no surprise ending. The student became immersed in his story about a girl torn between two young men who want to take her to the prom. And all of her students learned how to properly do the dreaded r-word — revise.
"I like it because most students said it helped them learn how to revise," said Bramwell, who’s been involved with Young Playwrights for 10 years. "They were used to just writing things and handing them in."
Pan loved the way his play about high school love, friendship and betrayal, aptly named with the pun-on-words Hall Pass, matured as it was cast and rehearsed at Temple.
"I think after this week, I’m going to miss it a lot," he said. ••
For more information about Young Playwrights, call 215- 665-9226 or visit www.phillyyoungplaywrights.org
Reporter Lauren Fritsky can be reached at 215-354-3038 or lfritsky@phillynews.com