ASF’s Young Southern Writers’ Project One Act Play Competition was created to give voice to a new generation of Southern authors.  By providing school visits, teacher training and prize incentives, YSWP creates a venue for high school writers to try their hand at the exciting art of playwriting.

Write on!
Teaching the art of playwriting
October 23, 2007

Struggling to help your students find their unique voice?  Novelist and playwright Robert Ford, who has been recognized by the Texas Institute of Letters and awarded the  James A. Michener Fellowship, James Fellowship, Stanley Drama Award and a fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council, assists teachers with specific techniques for crafting effective stories through playwriting in this one-day playwriting seminar.  Teachers learn exercises that help focus their students’ ideas while having the opportunity to do some playwriting themselves.   Teachers who attend this workshop will see a production of Crowns.

Robert Ford is the current director of the Arkansas Playwrights Workshop and is playwright-in-residence at TheatreSquared.  His play, The Fall of the House, was selected for a staged reading at the 2007 Southern Writers’ Project Festival of New Plays.

ASF Seminars are approved for CEU credit though the University of Alabama.

I have taught creative writing, but not playwriting.  Thank you for some great ideas,
which I am incorporating into my AP Creative Writing Unit.
- Kay Whaley, Eufala

Click here for more information on other ASF Teacher Seminars

Playwright in the Classroom
October 22 – November 2

Students across the state experience hands-on creative writing exercises led by working playwrights.  Through the use of critical thinking, conflict resolution and problem solving activities, students learn how to create a one-act play while exploring their creative potential. Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder brings her unique skills as a professional playwright to this dynamic program.  Raised on a houseboat in Mobile, Alabama, Elyzabeth participated in the first Young Southern Writers’ Project.  Since then she has had plays produced as far away as the Royal Court Theatre in London and as close to home as the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.  Her play Gee’s Bend, that was commissioned by and premiered at ASF last season, will be produced at 5 major theatres across the nation this season.  Awards include the Prism Generation Next Screenwriting Fellowship, Tennessee Williams Playwriting Scholarship, Dakin Playwriting Fellowship, Next Step Playwriting Fellowship and a MacDowell Fellowship.

The outreach component of visiting high schools, giving workshops and cultivating young
writers has its own satisfaction.  I would like to think that each year the Young Southern
Writers’ Project one-act play contest receives more and better plays because of the
school visits and that we have given them a curiosity and an interest in theatre.
- Carlyle Brown, playwright

For more information Nancy Rominger or Kevin Stewart.