MR. KOJO NNAMDILots of students read Shakespeare in school. But how many get a chance to be Shakespeare and write their own play? Starting tonight, 15 young playwrights, aged 10 to 18, will see their work performed by professional actors on the stage of the GALA Hispanic Theater in Columbia Heights. The festival of student plays is sponsored by the non-profit Young Playwrights Theater, whose in-school program teaches the craft of playwriting to economically disadvantaged students in the city's public and charter schools and in Arlington, Va. public schools.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIThe plays' themes run the gamut from a flatworm's fear of peanut butter by an elementary school student to the impact of addiction on families by a high school student. Joining me in studio to talk about the Young Playwrights Theater and this festival in particular is David Snider, producing artistic director of Young Playwrights Theater. David, thank you for joining us.

MR. DAVID SNIDERThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIAlso joining us in studio is Amber Faith Walton, student playwright. She's a student, a junior at Bell Multicultural High School in D.C. Thank you so much for joining us, Amber.

MS. AMBER FAITH WALTONThank you.

NNAMDIDavid, the in-school playwriting program at the Young Playwrights Theater works with more than 1,000 students in Greater Washington every year. How is your program hardwired, connected into the curriculum in the schools that you serve?

SNIDERWell, we work with schools, really, long term, so Bell Multicultural High School, where Amber attends, for instance, we've been there for 16 years. And we work really closely with the teachers and the faculty to explore what standards they need to meet, what outcomes they need to meet, and we craft curriculum that meet those standards while activating student learning of whatever they're trying to learn. So history, English, whatever they're doing in their classroom, we bring it to life with the artist in the classroom.

NNAMDIWhat makes playwriting a good tool for doing that, for teaching students both the fundamentals of writing and the possibilities of individual expression?

SNIDERYou know, it gives them a chance to really meet the content, so they get to not only explore what they're learning but bring their voice to it. So they're not only learning about Jamestown, for instance, in the fourth grade, but they're exploring different points of view. What was it like to be a settler in Jamestown? What was it like to be a slave in Jamestown? Creating characters based on that history and then bringing their own points of view about that to life and expressing it to their community.

NNAMDI800-433-8850 is our number. How do you think writing a play might help your child understand both language and life? 800-433-8850 or send us a tweet, @kojoshow, e-mail to kojo@wamu.org, or simply go to our website kojoshow.org. Join the conversation there. Amber, tell us about your play, "Changing Tides: Judge Me Gently." How...

WALTONMy play is about a young gay woman, who gets on a train to find a conservative man. And the train eventually breaks down as the man tries to leave, so the tension between the two build during the play.

NNAMDIWhat made you come up with that topic?

WALTONWell, I'm really into social justice. So, when I began to write my play, I decided I wanted it to deal something around that, and an everyday thing that I witness as just injustice to people that are a little different. So I decided to make it broad enough that it could apply to many different injustices that people face every day.

NNAMDIAnd this happens on a train?

WALTONYes.

NNAMDIYou ride Metro?

WALTONYes.

NNAMDIAnd was that a part of the inspiration for this conversation that you have seen and overheard on Metro?

WALTONWell, I've seen some things happen on Metro, things like that. So, I mean, it kind of was, kind of wasn't.

NNAMDIYou write poetry, and you've done some creative writing before. How was writing a play different from anything else you've written before?

WALTONWell, when the program was first introduced, I was -- I thought I'd have it, you know, down pat because I've written before. But I didn't know how to write a play.

NNAMDII'm a writer. I'm a writer.

WALTONYeah, but I never wrote a play before. So it was different in effect, and it was a little harder because it was something I didn't do. And I was at the same level with everybody else in my classroom.

NNAMDIHow did you develop the characters and the plot in your play?

WALTONWell, through the program, YPT, they gave us a teaching artist. So I developed my first character on my own and then -- well, I was just like, oh, I don't know what to do with her, so my teaching artist pretty much showed us, like, how we create a conflict. So I knew that, well, what's a scenario where this young gay woman would be in a conflict? So I thought, with a conservative man.

NNAMDI800-433-8850. Have you ever tried writing a play? Did it ever make it to the stage like Amber's is? 800-433-8850. We're talking with Amber Faith Walton. She is a student playwright. She's a junior at Bell Multicultural High School here in Washington. David Snider is also with us. He is producing, artistic director with the Young Playwrights Theater. We're talking about the Young Playwrights Theater festival currently taking place at the GALA Hispanic Theater in Columbia Heights. David, you draw on mid-career theater people to teach playwriting in the schools. How do you train them for their role in the classroom?

SNIDERWell, we do a teaching artist training every August. So we spend three or four days with everyone that's going to teach with us and go through the curriculum, go through our approach in the classroom and really spend those days making sure that everybody is on the same page. And we hire only professional artists, people who are already in the middle of their careers so that they really have a craft they can pass on to students 'cause we believe it's important that students see that the people that are leading them in the classroom really have their own artistry and their own professional craft.

NNAMDIThe playwrights you're showcasing this week range in age from 10 to 18. What are some of the themes in their plays?

SNIDERWell, you know, when you go to 10-year-olds, you look at one satire about "American Idol," one play called "Money, Money, Money," about two boys' obsession with money and starting lemonade stands and their rivalry in trying to make and make more money until they realize that their friendship is more important to them than money. And then you go into the middle school and high school, and you start to explore themes of gang violence, you start to explore themes of gender identity -- one play about the fall and the discovery of Atlantis, one play by a high school student about, literally, the nature of existence.

SNIDERSo the 15 plays that we have over the next three days are all over the map. And you see students from exploring what they're dealing with right now in their own lives to what they imagine about the future or what they imagine about the rest of the universe.

NNAMDII find the play about the flatworm's fear of peanut butter quite intriguing.

NNAMDI800-433-8850. Have you ever been exposed to the Young Playwrights Theater? What has been your experience? Or have you ever written a play? Here is Jeffrey in Washington, D.C. Jeffrey, you are on the air. Go ahead, please.

JEFFREYHi, Kojo. Good afternoon. This is Jeff...

NNAMDIGod afternoon.

JEFFREYThis is Jeffrey Richardson. And I'm just calling and thanking you for doing this show and highlighting on playwrights' theater. I've been a big fan of Young Playwrights for a while now and really looking forward to seeing the play, "Changing Tides" tomorrow. They've been doing excellent work in the schools. I've had opportunity to see some of their productions and the work that they're doing with young people, so it's really exciting to see them sort of reviving the arts in the way that they're doing.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call, Jeffrey. How did Young Playwrights Theater get started, David?

SNIDERWe were started by Karen Zacarias, who's a Latino playwright, who's actually, now, a resident playwright at Arena Stage as well, and getting produced all over the country, which is fantastic. And she started us in 1995 when she came back to D.C. from graduate school and just wanted to do something with social conscience with her art. So she started going into Bell Performing Arts Center and other schools and teaching playwriting for free. Two years later, we were incorporated, and we were off and running.

NNAMDI800-433-8850. How do you think the arts work as an educational tool? You can also go to our website, kojoshow.org. Offer your opinion or ask a question or make a comment there. How do you choose which plays will be performed in the festival?

SNIDERYou know, we choose the playwrights as much as the plays. So there's a professional reading artist panel that meets in January and reads the 800 plays that we generate each year and tries to get them down to these 15. So you can imagine the struggle that that poses, so we have a lot of arguments. We have a lot of discussion, and, really, what we're looking at is which students have engaged in the process the most, which students have experienced the most growth and which students are at a tipping point, where if we fully produce them, spend another three months working on their play and fully producing with a company of artists, how many of them are going to have a tipping point where they really find themselves and grow into their voice?

NNAMDIAmber, when you started out in this process, did you fully expect that your play would be performed? Or were you uncertain?

WALTONI was uncertain. I had no idea that, out of that many students, like, my play had the ability to stand out amongst all of the other students. But even with that, I think that being in the classroom and hearing the other students' plays, they were all really outstanding. And, mainly, it was because YPT gave us the tools and encouragement to express ourselves through writing.

NNAMDIEach of the playwrights, David, it's my understanding, in this festival is being paid for his or her work. That means Amber is getting a check?

SNIDERThat's right. You know, it's really important for students to know that they can make money doing this, that their ideas brought forth and manifest can really drive the creative economy. And there is a moment in every rehearsal process where we stop and we say to the students, they're giving notes to the company and saying, do that a little bit differently, change that -- 'cause they give notes to the artists. And I say, look around the room. Look at the 15 or 20 people in this room working together, collaborating and getting a paycheck because you wrote what you wrote. Because you had that idea, brought it forth, revised it, worked it, we're here today, earning money and working together because of you.

SNIDERSo students really get the idea that not only can they bring their ideas forward, but it's something that they can do to drive the world with their ideas.

NNAMDINot only is each of the playwrights in the festival being paid for his or her work, each of the actors is being paid for his or her work. Have you ever been paid before for doing any writing, Amber?

WALTONNo.

NNAMDIThis was just a hobby you had, something you like to do. Did you really have a sense at any point before this, that it was something you could get paid for doing?

WALTONNo. I didn't think that -- at least on my level, that I would ever get paid for doing something that I really enjoyed that much.

NNAMDIWell, what's interesting for me about that is that, by being paid for it, it becomes, some people would say, objectively, work. But being creative in a way always involves some work. Did you feel an added sense of responsibility when you found out that you were going to be compensated, paid for this?

WALTONI didn't. I felt a little more work when I realized it was going to be produced and anybody could come and see it, so...

NNAMDIYes. Well, there are different kinds of stresses, aren't there? Here is Jana is Washington, D.C. Jana, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

JANAYes, Kojo, thank you for having this show. I'm a teaching artist with Arena Stage, and I'm very familiar with YPT's work. And I can say, as a member of the acting community, I'm so grateful for opportunities like this. It not only enhances, you know, our skills as an artist, but it's been really remarkable to see the changes in young people's lives, and especially when they're coming from -- I've worked a lot with the inner-city schools. And it's so rewarding to see these kids turn to creativity as opposed to expressing themselves in a destructive way. It's -- I've just seen remarkable changes, and it's because they've given -- they've been given the opportunity to tell their story and have been encouraged to do it in a really positive, creative way, but it also -- it can be very therapeutic.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call. Care to comment at all, David?

SNIDERI think it's true that, once students get the opportunity to simply explore the idea of creating character and having choices, they start to realize and reflect in their own lives how they all have choices and that there may be conflicts in their lives that they can handle in many different ways. So a lot of times, in the first draft of a play, a student will end a play with a big shootout or a big violence at the end. And the teaching artist will say, well, that's one choice. And what other choices could there be? And they find the sort of rainbow of choices that that character can make and find different ways that their story could play out, and they leave the YPT experience with, I think, a greater perspective on their own lives and their ability to choose their own path.

NNAMDIJana, thank you so much for your call. You, too, can call us at 800-433-8850. David, do you know if any of the alumni of the Young Playwrights program have gone on to become professional writers or actors?

SNIDERYou know, we have. One of our -- we have a resident acting company now that we established six years ago, and one of the resident actors is named Fernando Romero. And he was a YPT student, oh, about 11 or 12 years ago at Bell. When I was coming back -- when I was coming into D.C. and to lead YPT, I met Fernando for the first time. He ended up going to university for theater, came back to D.C., auditioned for us. We cast him in the first show that we did with the Smithsonian, and now he's one of our resident actors. And Fernando is one of those wonderful artists who can go into Bell and say, I was sitting where you're sitting 11 years ago. I can tell you that you can do this.

NNAMDIYou know, Amber, when you've written the play and it's now been accepted to be performed, there's a whole another experience when you see professional actors -- the teaching artists, as they are called -- when you see professional actors perform it, what did you learn from the actors who were performing and, as David was talking about, showing you the different dimensions and choices you could have your character -- that you can have for your character?

WALTONWell, when my play was finished, like, YPT -- what David was saying, like, we have the three months where they go on to teach us how to edit it, and they complete our play with us. So during that process, I wrote my play, and I really wanted it to reach out to other people. But I didn't think that I needed to learn much from it until the actors started to act it. And I realized that, like, on a daily basis, humans tend to judge one another, not necessarily in a negative way, but we still tend to do it. So by eliminating that, you give yourself the ability to learn more about a person because you have no prior judgment on them.

NNAMDIYou know what I find fascinating, David Snider? The first time the student who writes a play listened to professionals do a play reading of that play. Can you tell us a little bit about how the students respond to that, what they tend to learn from that, how surprised they are by seeing how some of the lines that they may have had some interpretation of in their own heads interpreted differently by a professional actor?

SNIDERYeah, for a lot of time -- a lot of times, it's, for students, the first time that they get the chance to see something on the page come to life in front of them. And they realize that it's a lot funnier than they meant it to be, or it's funnier than they hoped it would be, or it's more dramatic. And a lot of our students who are ESL students, English as a second language, or behind grade reading level, start to really realize that if I put a period there or a comma there or a semicolon there, it changes the thought.

SNIDERThe way that this is expressed, changes. So if I want to be really clear, if I want to express what's most important to me in my life to the rest of the world, I have to be clear on the page. And so students suddenly realize that these tools of grammar and language and structure are not just rules, but they're tools to express themselves about what they most care about to the world around them.

NNAMDIWell, we're talking about young people here. So, Amber, talk about patience because, look, you've written a poem, you like it, it's good, it's done. But when you've written a play and it's being performed by people, there's a lot of rewriting that's involved. How patient were you with that process?

WALTONWell, so a lot of the times when we went back to edit things and my teaching artist would tell me, like, you should reword this, or you should put different punctuation so your point gets across. And at first, it's like, it's your play, so you're like, what, that's my play. But then the more you listen and when you take the advice, you can kind of shape it and make it even more than what they hoped. So I think that, at first, the patience is hard because it's your play and you already finished it and you've wrote it. But, now, once you take that advice, you learn to take more advice from them, and your play becomes better. So I think it's...

NNAMDIIt's one thing, David, for a teacher in an English class to correct your grammar or to correct your sentence structure. It's a whole another thing, as they say, for you to see it performed by somebody who's a professional who says, it would work better this way. How do young people deal with the patience that it takes to go rewrite over and over again?

SNIDERYou know, for a lot of our students, when they hear it brought to life in front of them for the first time, that's when they get really excited about the process because that's when their friends around the classroom laugh at a joke that they wrote. Or that's when somebody two rows over is crying and says, I've gone through something like that, my mother went through that as well. I didn't know that that was in your life. And students literally -- we sort of create community in every classroom. And students, a lot of times, are inspired then to really dig in and work so that the next time -- 'cause the actors are going to come in again -- the next time they do it, it's even better, or it's even more of what they want.

NNAMDIWhere does the funding for Young Playwrights Theater come from?

SNIDERWe survive almost entirely on contributed income still. So we have a lot of foundation strength -- Meyer Foundation, The Cayfritz Foundation. We get some D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities funding. We get NEA funding every year, which is key to our success. We get some corporate support -- PEPCO, Verizon, Target -- and we survive on individual donations. So YPTDC.org, people can learn about how they can support us.

NNAMDIHow has the recession affected your funding?

SNIDERYou know, next year, we're facing maybe about $150,000 cutback in our budget potentially. That's maybe 300 students that wouldn't necessarily get this process. So we're really trying to drive our individual donations. We're really relying more on individuals to step up and fill the gap on a lot of government cuts that we're facing.

NNAMDIAmber, your play airs on Tuesday night, correct?

WALTONYeah.

NNAMDIThat's when people can see your play. Now that you have seen it in rehearsals, what would you say you've learned about this process, about following the process through from beginning to end?

WALTONI think that every student should do it once they get the chance to because it's a really rewarding experience at the end.

NNAMDIAt the end, it's a lot of hard work, but ultimately it's a rewarding experience. Can you tell us a little more, David, about when the festival runs and how people can participate in it by seeing it?

SNIDERSure. It's tonight through Wednesday, April 11 through the 13, at GALA Hispanic Theatre on 14th Street Northwest. It's absolutely free. The doors open, and there's a pre-reception with food starting at seven o'clock. The plays start at 7:30, and it takes about 90 minutes. And there is a post-show reception as well where people get to meet the playwrights and talk about the plays.

NNAMDIYoung Playwrights Theater does a new play festival every year. What's new this year is that it's being done over three nights, and you are doing 15 plays -- more plays that you have ever done before. Tell us a little bit about -- who are the students who participate in Young Playwrights Theater? They're from D.C. ...

SNIDERSo we work in all eight wards of the District of Columbia. We're in grades four through 12 in public schools. We're in about 20 public schools. We're in public schools in Northern Virginia and now in Maryland a little bit as well. So when we go into a classroom, we work with every student in that classroom. So we're in there for 12 weeks. If there's a class of 30 students, all 30 students are going to write a play. So every student writes a play, every student hears their play performed by professional artists, and we bring it to life in productions like tonight.

NNAMDIDavid Snider is the producing artistic director of Young Playwrights Theater. Thank you so much for joining us.

SNIDERThank you so much, Kojo.

NNAMDIAmber Faith Walton is a student playwright. She's a junior at Bell Multicultural High School. Her play is on Tuesday night. Amber, thank you for joining us. Good luck to you.

WALTONThank you very much.

NNAMDIAnd thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.