Philadelphia Young Playwrights Starts Blog About 2011 Young Voices Festival

Each year, InterAct Theatre Company joins forces with Philadelphia Young Playwrights to produce the Young Voices Monologue Festival, a competitive program that invites high school students from all over the Philadelphia area to write and submit monologues that address issues important to students today. The top monologues are selected to be developed by professional directors, dramaturgs, and actors, and then presented in a series of showcase performances.

This year, sixteen monologues written by students from eleven high schools have been selected to participate in two workshops and four performances (February 16-19, 2011). Selected from over 300 submissions, the chosen monologues cover a variety of topics including family, race, violence and identity.

In an effort to chronicle this year's Young Voices process, Philly Young Playwrights has started the Young Voices blog, which will feature an on-going series of entries by high school junior Glenna Walsh, author of the monologue Predisposition, as she tries to capture the voices of playwrights, directors, actors, and dramaturgs as they participate in the competition and festival, celebrating the art and craft of theater.


Links to More information about Young Voices:

Visit the Young Voices Blog

Purchase Tickets to Attend the 2011 Young Voices Festival (Only $5.00 Each!)

Visit the Young Voices Page on Philadelphia Young Playwrights Website

Watch a Performance of a Monologue from the 2010 Young Voices Festival

Watch 2010 Young Voices' THE PATIENT by Jacob Fagliano

Written by Jacob Fagliano, who is a sophomore at Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, THE PATIENT was one of 15 student-written monologues that appeared in 2010 Young Voices High School Monologue Festival, produced through a collaboration between InterAct Theatre Company's education program, InterAction, and Philadelphia Young Playwrights. Along with the other winning monologues, THE PATIENT was chosen from over 400 submissions written by Philadelphia area high school students to be professionally produced as part of 2010 Young Voices, which was held on the Mainstage of The Adrienne, February 3-6, 2010.

Directed by Dany Guy and dramaturged by Rebecca Wright, THE PATIENT opens with 24-year old Geoffrey Daniels (played by Thomas Choinacky) lying on a hospital bed, loosely wrapped in hospital bedding and connected to an IV. When his nurse (played by Bi Jean Ngo) enters to check on her patient, Geoffrey, who is clearly attracted to her, feels he needs to explain himself. Hilarity ensues as we follow Geoffrey’s extremely ridiculous telling of all the events that lead up to his hospital visit.