![]() It’s actually quite funny. I received an email two days before Christmas from Donnell at Philadelphia Young Playwrights congratulating me on being selected to participate in 2014 LEAP leadership conference in California. Of course I was super excited at first, because I mean who isn’t when they hear that they are going to California? After a few hours, I decided to look at the email again because I really wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. After reading more about LEAP, I had many thoughts in my mind that this conference was not one that I would enjoy. Summer slowly approached, and I knew that this conference was sneaking up on me. I decided to do some more research on it once again, and this time I was committed to thinking that this conference really wasn’t for me; but I knew that everyone kept talking about how much they enjoyed it… So I figured that I would give it a shot, what did I have to lose? Arriving to LAX in my green LEAP shirt was a memory like no other. Right away other people in these green shirts approached me. They were super enthusiastic, and welcoming. I thought to myself, “Ok, this is comforting”…. But what am I getting myself into. When we finally arrived to UCLA, I was surrounded by hundreds of other students like myself. Some of those students who surrounded me had been to LEAP almost every year! I then realized that this must be a great program if it means people keep coming back and back again. I finally settled myself in, and shortly after that began to feel more and more at home. I got to meet my team, and it was so diverse! I had teammates from Australia, Germany, Malaysia, and others from around the United States. We started out with a bunch of icebreakers, and really got to know one another in such a short time. You would have thought we known each other for years by the way we were laughing so much! Then moving on throughout the night, the conference started to become intense; but a good intense. Our minds were being exploded with so much great information. Information on how to be successful, especially when you enter the real world. ![]() Re-Vision Week 1 Re-Flections By David Bradley, Director, and the Re-Vision Ensemble “We are making…a beginning.” That’s how one of the teenage artists in PYP’s two-week Re-Vision lab put it when asked to describe what we are making in these weeks. It was a great encapsulation of process. Re-Vision, which brings together teens from across the region with professional artists, launches a year-long process of making a play for the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts. The play we make, currently titled Work/Shop/Shift will be a featured presentation at the Innovation Studio at the Kimmel Center in April 2015. So, we’re making a play. But we’re just at the beginning. We’re making an ensemble of teen artists, university artists and professional artists, but we’re just at the beginning of that. And we’re making discoveries of how this might all work—perhaps the most important beginning of all. Our theme—how do we make things, why do we make what we make, how do we use the resources at hand, how do we repurpose materials, ideas, ourselves. To investigate, we’ve begun experimenting with writing and movement. We’re visiting very different Philadelphia hubs of making—Greensgrow Farm, a factory site turned urban farm in Fishtown; Indy Hall, a co-working space filled with makers of many things in Old City; the ExCITe Center, a lab for innovation in technology and design at Drexel. We’ve made drums from Home Depot buckets and machines from our bodies. We’re inviting friends and families to come play with us this Thursday and move the beginning forward. ![]() Mindy Early, Director for Education and Program Services, shares her reflection and revision tips following the How I Learned to Write Festival…. As I mentioned in my last post, I had the absolute pleasure and honor of directing a play by an amazing young playwright for the How I Learned to Write Festival, a program created by Philadelphia Young Playwrights. During the weeklong process, I can only hope this talented young writer learned as much from me as I did from her. That’s my favorite part of new play development – through the process of bringing a new play to life, everyone in the room learns about the art form from one another. The conversations both inside and outside the rehearsal room are great for remembering, too. As we tackle a world that’s never existed before and we explore how best to bring that world to life, we think back. To past experiences, to past lessons, and to past mentors, all which guided us at one time or another. When we offer these kernels of wisdom from the past to our fellow artists in the present, we honor our mentors by paying their mentorship forward. For me, the How I Learn to Write Festival was rich in remembering. In particular, I remembered two long-forgotten revision prompts from two of my greatest mentors. I was thrilled that one of the prompts was of great help to my young playwright, and I hope that all of the prompts I share below will help any writers out there who are wrestling with revision. Click HERE to read the full blog…. |
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