Left to right: Kevin Drouillard, Kimarra Cannonier, and Lisa Edwards in “Coming of Age” by William Santos, part of the Young Playwrights from Castillo festival..

On most nights throughout September, October, and November, three or more rehearsal rooms were abuzz with activity as young performers rehearsed the ASP of NY, YO!’s most ambitious project yet: the Young Playwrights from Castillo festival, produced by the Castillo Theatre.

Work for the festival began over the summer, as a group of young people from All Stars Project programs worked with Youth Onstage! artistic director Dan Friedman and Fred Newman, Castillo’s artistic director from 1989 through 2005, for a weekly playwriting workshop.  The group emerged with five brand new one-acts – all of which engaged with significant social and political issues in innovative new ways. But that was just the beginning!  Once the scripts had been drafted, festival director Brian Mullin and producer Jim Horton took over, assembling a team of 19 actors, five directors, three producers and an ace technical team of talented volunteers to get the shows on their feet.  The young actors were graduates of the Youth Onstage! Community Performance School.

On Sunday, December 7, a distinguished panel of playwrights who’ve been produced on Broadway and off, as well as theater producers, critics, and literary managers gathered at the All Stars Project for “Who’s Qualified to Write a Play, Anyway?” a stimulating discussion of the challenges that young people from poor communities face in accessing the world of new play development.

All in all, Young Playwrights raised the bar for all of our youth theatre work.  And it keeps rising: rehearsals are already underway for our 2009 production, Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo, a sprawling historical epic about the struggles for Congolese independence.  In addition to these fantastic productions, our ongoing performance training continues to introduce more inner-city young people to the excitement and creativity of theatrical performance.

For more information about the work of Youth Onstage!, contact program manager Brian Mullin at 212-356-8452 or bmullin@allstars.org.