Young playwrights nurtured at St. Mary's Academy

Tyrin Sykes now knows that some of his best ideas come to him when he’s hungry – like the time he was looking at a photo of alligators right before lunchtime.

“I said to myself, ‘If I had two alligators, what would they be eating?’” said Tyrin of the inspiration behind his original play, “Let’s Get Some Popeyes.”

The comedy, which follows the exploits of two alligators who leave the confines of their aquarium-home to experience everyday life – and ponder a return to their former home in the swamp – is one of four original plays written by St. Mary’s Academy fifth graders that will be performed by professional actors May 17 at Dillard University’s Cook Theatre.

Tyrin and his fellow student-dramatists wrote the plays as the culminating activity of Goat in the Road Productions’ “Play/Write” program, in which middle school students at three New Orleans schools learned the basics of dramatic writing and stagecraft. St. Mary’s 49 fifth graders were among the 115 student-participants who received the weekly, 90-minute lessons in areas such as improvisation, the art of dialog, body movement, and costume and set design.

“It’s essentially an English class and a theater class squashed together,” said Shannon Flaherty, who co-taught the yearlong curriculum at St. Mary’s with her Goat in the Road colleague Rachel Carrico.

From day one, the program’s major thrust is teaching young people the mechanics of playwriting, while fueling their imagination with a technique called “See, Think, Wonder.” In this approach, youngsters are shown photographs – everything from a Native American totem pole, to a satellite image of Planet Earth – and then challenged to write what might happen next.

“This is how they generate the ideas for every single play that they write,” Flaherty explained. “They take the last line of the ‘See, Think, Wonder’ – or the most interesting wonder to them (about the photo) – and write the first line of a play. We start out with them writing 10-line plays, and then they build up to writing 15- and 20-line plays.”

Each student is expected to write eight plays and choose one to develop into a more complex drama with multiple scenes and characters. The work is difficult but rewarding, Flaherty said.

“We talk about ‘dramatic conflict’ as a character having a want, some obstacle getting in the way, the strategy they choose to get around it, and then a resolution,” she said.

St. Mary’s students wrote four of the 10 plays honored this year, all selected by an independent panel of theater professionals.
The other winning plays from St. Mary’s and their fifth-grade creators are:

• “Attack of the Monster Fish” by Zailand Adams: “A captain and his crew of nine pirates go on an adventure to catch the biggest fish in the sea to win the Pirate of the Year Award,” Zailand said, noting that a talking crab is his play’s “funny sidekick.”

• “Sknorking Little Boy” by LaNaiya Bell:The drama centers on a boy who keeps the whole neighborhood awake with his “sknorking” – a type of snoring that sounds like the grunts of a pig. “I used to make this sound when I laughed,” LaNaiya said.

• “One Sleepy President” by Tyran Nogess:In this comedy, President Barack Obama tries to cure his sleeping disorder. “He goes to the doctor, but the medicine doesn’t work,” Tyran said. “It’s set at the White House and the doctor’s office.”