Students get chance to incubate at Victory Gardens this summer

A pair of Northwest suburban teens find themselves in a think tank of sorts.

They are spending much of the summer at the Victory Gardens Theater, not as actors, but working behind the scenes as young playwrights.

Located in Chicago, Victory Gardens prides itself on being the top launching pad in the city for new plays, and by extension the so-called "incubator of new playwrights," as coined by an article in The Wall Street Journal.

To advance that mission, the theater has hosted an intensive youth playwriting workshop for the last five summers, called "Sound Off: Your Words/Your Voice."

This summer, Christina Courtney, a senior at Elk Grove High School, and Breanna Lucas, a sophomore at Prospect High School, both won spots after submitting written works and earning teacher recommendations.

They were among nine high school students from Chicago and its suburbs - from a pool of 50 candidates - chosen to work with resident professional playwright Douglas Post, who will mentor them.

For both teens, it is the first time they have delved into the craft of playwriting, but both come at it with a love of theater and writing.

Courtney professes a love of fiction, particularly fantasy, such as "Lord of the Rings," "The Hobbit," and the "Harry Potter" series.

"I expect that anything I write will have an element of history or fantasy in it," she says.

Lucas, on the other hand, tends toward more contemporary stories, and particularly those with a humorous bent. Her submission for the workshop centered around a girl working at a shoe store in the mall.

During their first two sessions last week, the young writers read through published one-acts, looking at technique and the sheer mechanics of writing plays. In the coming weeks, they will learn how to develop characters as well as layer texture in their plays, and how to incorporate them into the text and subtext.

In between each session they will be expected to write a four- to five-page scene, that the group will read aloud, and critique. By the end of the workshop, they will have enough material to flesh out a 10-minute, one-act play.

Not only that, but each playwright will see their work performed by working actors. Their original one-acts will come to life in a staged-reading style format on Aug. 3 on the Biograph Theater's main stage in Chicago.

Lucas had little knowledge of one-acts before this year. Before high school, she had appeared in plays and musicals at South Middle School in Arlington Heights, but last fall she earned a role in Prospect's fall play: "Uno: A Festival of One Acts."

"It was so much fun," Lucas says. "I've never really experienced one-acts before, but it's amazing how much can go on in 10 minutes."

Courtney has had limited experience on stage, but she is hoping her interest in whimsical fantasy and historical fiction can make the transformation from an author's vivid imagination to the stage through her descriptive writing style.

Robert Cornelius, arts education director for Victory Gardens, says the workshop aims to go beyond teaching students the craft of writing a play. Its ultimate goal is to nurture and develop their individual voices.

"Being a playwrights' theater, we want to spur interest in playwriting and the theater arts as career options," Cornelius says. "We've found that helping students write their own play - with guidance from a real playwright and watching actors bring it to life - is a great way to do that."