In the world of theater, getting a play produced professionally may be even more difficult than landing a part in the play. But two students from High School South, competing against more than 200 playwrights from four area high schools, have managed to do just that.
Alexandra Dicker and Megan Gerity will have their plays produced at McCarter Theater in the fourth annual Youth Ink! Play Festival. Dicker’s “Imaginary Games” and Gerity’s “A Life of Numbers” will be performed by professional actors on Friday, June 8, at 7 p.m.; and Saturday, June 9 at 4 and 7 p.m. A $10 donation is requested.##M:[more]##
The 10-minute plays were written with the guidance of teaching artists, classroom teachers, and fellow student dramaturgs. The playwriting competition program involved four area schools in a playwriting residency focusing on writing exercises, in-class improvisations, and assignments to prepare students to write their own plays.
Dicker, a senior at South, was born in London, England, and has lived in West Windsor for 13 years. Her father is retired and her mother is a cello teacher. Her sister Elizabeth, 21, is a junior at Monmouth University studying special education. Her brother Gareth, 14, is a freshman at South.
Living with them is Japanese foreign exchange student, Yusuke Shimasaki, 18, also a senior at South. “We chose to host him this year because of my positive experience as an exchange student in France last year,” she says.
Dicker will attend McGill University in the fall. “I am undecided about my major, but I love foreign languages, literature, and music,” she says. “I definitely want to learn Chinese and continue playing violin.”
None of the students were aware about the playwriting residency when they signed up for the course “Search for Self in Literature,” taught by Dara Sheller. “I was thrilled of course to find out that we would be working with McCarter,” says Dicker, who had seen Youth Ink! in 2005 when Don Gilpin was her sophomore English teacher.
According to Dicker “Imaginary Games” is about a man, John Michael, who has had trouble differentiating between reality and the imaginary world he creates in his head. “He used imagination to escape from the harsh realities of life, but in the end imagination ended up hurting him even more,” she says.
Dicker, who has seen many plays at McCarter, believes that it helped her write her play as it inspired her. Her favorites at McCarter are Zora Neale Hurton’s “Polk County” and Harold Pinter’s “The Birthday Party.”
During the residency that Dicker participated in during the fall semester, professional actors were brought in to read the scripts. “It was exciting to hear the actors read my play for the first time,” she says. “It sounded better than I expected, but it also was obvious which places needed work and the feedback was very helpful,” she says. Dicker is assistant concert master of South’s orchestra and went on tour to Russia this spring. She also plays in two string quartets and played in the pit orchestra for “The Pajama Game.” Dicker also directed “Imaginary Games” at High School South’s Senior One Acts this spring.
Megan Gerity, a junior at South, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and has lived in Plainsboro for nine years. Her father is vice president of Macy’s Jewelry East and her mother is a planner for Macy’s BetterActive Wear. Her brother Patrick, 20, is in college at Rider University.
“I chose the course, Search for Self, because the name really grabbed me,” she says. “My counselor didn’t know much about the course so I decided to take it based on the name itself.”
“The lines from my play just naturally came to me, it was like 17 years of my life spilt out on that page,” she says. “I wrote it in about five minutes and I’ve changed around a few things here and there.” Her play features four characters for the audience to figure out if they are related to each other or if they are the same person.
“I wrote the play with a lot of repetition, patterns, and so each time you read it you may find something new,” she says. “I hope the audience will be able to pick up the patterns and symbols in my play because the meaning of my play lies underneath it all.”
Although Gerity has been attending theater events since she was very young she does not think it helped her write the play. “I think that my experience in life is what influenced me more than my experience with seeing Broadway shows,” she says.
The first time she heard actors read her play she felt “a bunch of feelings” including awkward, amazing, crazy, cool. “It’s still weird for me to hear it during rehearsals,” she says. “I think the weirdest thing about it is how everybody who reads it takes a part of it with them and reads it as if they are the ones who are actually talking, instead of just the character in the play talking. I love that the most.”
At south she is a member of the Diversity Club, Amnesty International, and the Yearbook Club. She works part-time job at Peebles Department Store in Plainsboro and volunteers at the Plainsboro Library. “However, I am still searching for a job where I can work with pre-schoolers and young children — because I think my life is taking me down the path of early childhood education and psychology,” she says.
Youth Ink! Play Festival, McCarter Theater, The Room, 91 University Place, 609-258-6511. www.mccarter.org. A post show discussion with directors, cast members, and playwrights takes place after each performance. Friday, June 8, 7 p.m.; Saturday, June 9, at 4 and 7 p.m. Register. $10 donation. 7 p.m.
