CHICAGO YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS FESTIVAL
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This is the sixth year Pegasus has held its competition for Chicago-area students, and of the 250 scripts submitted, 4 were awarded full professional productions. None presumes to worry about the future of theater. None caters to what’s popular. The young playwrights are rash; they haven’t learned yet that writing from the heart and striking straight at an issue doesn’t always draw audiences, though it should. They are merciless. They tell it like it is–and if you can’t hack it, go watch TV. They draw their theater from life, not the other way around.
My Son Is a Girl is the collaborative product of 200 students from Carpenter, Peabody, and Otis elementary schools, who developed it through improvisation in seven classrooms. Their story is of a boy who gets his wish to become a girl in a fairly straightforward way. I shudder to think what 200 adults would do with such a premise, but these students would rather delve into good-natured silliness than the human psyche. Instead of dissecting the boy, they accept him–and move on with glee to the havoc his transformation creates. Warner Crocker directed with all the exaggeration and speed of a child telling a wildly funny story, but what these children seem to be telling us is that we have a long way to go before we are free of sexual stereotypes.
If these young playwrights don’t get the honesty squeezed out of them by higher institutions of learning, if they stay true to their instincts, there will continue to be voices in the theater worth reckoning with. And that beats a beer garden any day.
