By Roy Steinberg, Producing Artistic Director
I feel most alive in a theatre – both as an audience and as a storyteller in the role of an actor or director. The uber storyteller is the playwright whose words create magic and all of us at Cape May Stage are seeking to identify emerging artists with new voices.
Entering a theatre space my voice automatically is quieter and I’m aware of other human beings and can feel my breathing alter and the excitement of being with a group of strangers who join with me to create – “An Audience”. Similarly, when I enter the rehearsal hall as a director there is a collaboration with other artists that is thrilling as we use our tools to tell a story. Actors take the words of a playwright and use their own vocal and physical instruments to bring those words off the page and onto the stage. When these elements come together at the highest level, we create art.
Living in a digital age, all of us spend enormous amounts of time looking at screens on our phones, iPad, laptops, watches, monitors of every sort and the experience is cool and detached. Theatre is hot – the practitioners and the spectators have a pulse, and it is dangerous because anything can happen.
We breathe as one and laugh together and sit in rapt silence together. Theatre civilizes us by fostering empathy, community and cultural identity through shared experience. It can provide a space for important and often difficult conversations in an engaging and impactful way.
Our National Playwrights Symposium at Cape May Stage brings Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winners together with writers who are mid-career, and all the participants are adults. What is missing is the experience of younger artists. That’s why we are seeking high school students so we can include those voices. Tell us your stories. Use your imagination to create characters or use real events from your life to base the events upon.
As an incentive, Cape May Stage has created a contest with a cash prize for the winner of the best play. It would be a dream come true if we could begin a relationship with a writer to produce that work. This Christmas we are mounting a new work created specifically for Cape May Stage. Dan McCormick wrote a play for us called “Becoming Satchel Paige” and now he returns to bring us “Let’s Catch Santa”.
Perhaps a future production will be your script.
To learn more about the Young Playwrights Award, click here.
Roy Steinberg is the Producing Artistic Director at Cape May Stage.
