The Ensemble Theatre Company (ETC), Santa Barbara’s only professional theater company, has received a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for ETC’s Young Playwrights’ Festival. The festival, now in its fourth year, was founded to introduce middle- and high-school students to the art of playwriting.
The festival’s guiding principle is that, “unlike other literary genres, dramatic writing has unique language and stylistic characteristics. A good script draws on the playwright’s passions, history, cultural connections and views about life, while requiring a mastery of language, character, and performance.”
Ann Eilers, the NEA’s acting chairman, avers that “as the country and the arts sector begin to imagine returning to a post-pandemic world, the National Endowment for the Arts is proud to announce funding that will help arts organizations such as Ensemble Theatre Company re-engage fully with partners and audiences.
“Although the arts have sustained many during the pandemic, the chance to gather with one another and share arts experiences is its own necessity and pleasure.”
Jonathan Fox, ETC’s artistic director, responds: “This is a great honor for us. We are proud to be a new recipient of an NEA grant.”
And Brian McDonald, ETC’s education director, adds: “The development of storytellers for the future of the American theater may be one of the most valuable educational programs that the ETC can offer the Santa Barbara community.
“Thanks to the generous support from the NEA, we are able to offer this unique dramatic writing program free to all participating students and provide a supportive team of nearly 30 theater professionals.”
The Young Playwrights’ Festival (YPF) is a 16-week program guiding as many as 20 young writers, ages 13-19, through the intricacies of playwriting. It is the only such program in the region, and is taught by theater education teaching artists and mentored by professional playwrights and theater directors.
During the five months of weekly teaching and coaching sessions, each participant develops an original 10-minute play that is produced and staged with professional actors for virtual or in-person public audiences. Entirely free of charge to the aspiring young playwrights, so too is access to the performances of the resulting plays.
This year’s festival of new 10-minute plays will be held at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 22, at The New Vic for a limited invited audience and viewable online via YouTube LIVE. As noted above, access to the event is free and open to the public.
For more information, visit RTC online at https://etcsb.org/education-and-outreach/young-playwrights-festival/.
In-person summer performance workshops for students 8-19
ETC’s Young Actors Conservatory is a performance-training program offering new performers the experience of working in a professional setting alongside working theater artists. The comprehensive curriculum balances performance and technique.
The 2021 summer programs include Camp Broadway, for students ages 8-12, and The Musical Theater Performance Workshop, for students ages 13-19.
The two-week Camp Broadway workshop offers aspiring young actors the chance to expand their performance skills by exposing them to the fundamentals of acting, singing and dancing.
Especially valuable for students new to the stage, this training program “encourages risk-taking and personal growth with nurturing guidance from theater professionals. Individual attention, ensemble building, character development and improvisation exercises are used to enhance creative expression, positive self-image and confidence.”
The camp runs Mondays through Fridays and culminates in a showcase for family and friends on The New Vic stage.
Workshop Dates: July 5-16, 2021
Times: 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Friday
Final Showcase, 1 p.m. Saturday, July 17
No experience necessary; no audition required
Tuition $550
The four-week Musical Theater Workshop is more intensive, and aimed at slightly older students, ages 13-19. Directed by award-winning actor/director, Brian McDonald, and taught by a professional faculty, participants study vocal technique, dance and acting.
The pay-off for all concerned is a live musical production on ETC’s stage: this summer’s show is the pop musical “Zombie Prom: Atomic Edition.” All students may audition, but remember: this is an advanced theater arts training and performance program, and acceptance is limited and based on the quality of their audition, as well as the level of experience and potential.
Workshop dates: July 19-Aug. 12
Times: 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Friday
Performances Aug. 13-15
Acceptance by video audition — audition submission deadline, May 15
Tuition $950
Scholarships are available and awarded based on financial need. Visit the ETC website for more information at https://etcsb.org/education-and-outreach/financial-assistance/.
In their pre-coed centuries, the Jesuits used to say, “Give us a boy until he is seven and you can have him after that: you’ll never break him.” I don’t know how they have adjusted this boast to cover all genders, but I am sure they manage.
The product of a partially Jesuit education myself, I remain in awe of their ability as teachers, although, as a Presbyterian, I was viewed with a certain amount of wariness.
If the right teacher can make all the difference, so can the wrong one: When I handed in an assignment, once that was too well-written, Father Gahan accused me of plagiarism. He was so definite in his judgment that I didn’t have such good writing in me that I have had a nagging suspicion ever since that he was right.
It wasn’t until I returned to a public high school, and fell under the influence of a Quaker lady named Sally Bryan, that I discovered the consciousness expanding experience of gentle encouragement. Sally didn’t teach me how to write, but she had greater success than any previous mentor in teaching me how to read.
Of all Sally’s gifts to her students, the greatest, I feel, was this question she taught us to ask of a text, including one of our own — a question formulated by the founder of the Society of Friends, George Fox: “Doth it speak to thy condition?”
That held me on track for decades, until I read Richard Rorty, and learned another important question, which amplified but did not replace Fox’s. Rorty said that literature was not for asking “What is truth?” but “What sorts of people are there in the world, and how do they fare?”
(As T.S. Eliot‘s Sweeney says: “I gotta use words when I talk to you.”)
As I grow older, I am ever more persuaded of the decisiveness of early mentoring. I don’t mean what happens in a lecture hall, or even a classroom, but one-on-one, mentor-student. If you and your mentor love and respect each other, then what you learn from your mentor stays with you always, and becomes a big part of who you are.
The mentor-student relationship is as vital in the dramatic arts as in any art or skill set. Under the right conditions, it can produce spectacular results.
Consider the career of the university professor, George Pierce Baker (1866-1935). Baker, a Harvard graduate (Class of 1887), taught in the Harvard English Department from 1888 to 1924. Failing to persuade Harvard to offer a degree in playwriting, Baker moved to Yale University in 1925, where he helped found the Yale School of Drama.
While still at Harvard, he began teaching English 47, a course in playwriting, in 1905, and he was the prime mover in creating the Harvard Theatre Collection at Harvard University Library.
In 1908, he founded the Harvard Dramatic Club, serving as its first sponsor, and in 1912 he founded his magnum opus, Workshop 47, to provide a forum for the performance of plays developed within his English 47 class.
For historians of drama in academia, Baker’s notes and prospectuses for both English 47 and Workshop 47 would be invaluable, if available. But for the rest of us, the quality of Baker’s mentoring may be assumed from the careers of his Workshop 47 students, including:
Philip Barry (“The Philadelphia Story,” “Holiday”); S.N. Behrman (“Biography,” “End of the Summer”); Sidney Howard “They Knew What They Wanted”); Eugene O’Neill (“Mourning Becomes Electra,” “Strange Interlude,” “The Iceman Cometh,” “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” …); Florence Ryerson (“Harriet,” “Wizard of Oz” screenplay); Maurine Dallas Watkins (“Chicago”); and Thomas Wolfe (“Welcome to Our City,” “Look Homeward, Angel”).
Enrolling your child in one of ETC’s workshops might just be arranging for the decisive encounter of your child’s life in art.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.