Twelve-year-old Rebecca Ehlers of Magnolia began writing stories in first grade.
Now, as a sixth-grade student at the TOPS alternative school, she's the youngest writer whose work was produced in this year's ACT Young Playwrights Festival.
The Young Playwrights Program offers middle- and high-school students the opportunity to work with professional playwright/teaching artists to learn the basics of playwriting during a 10-week curriculum offered at their schools.
Approximately 300 students in 14 Seattle-area schools participated in this year's program. Each year, the project culminates in a festival featuring the eight best student plays.
The eight students whose scripts are selected for the festival collaborate with professional directors and actors for the production. The plays were presented this year in ACT's Allen Theatre in two separate programs of staged readings March 1 through 3. Each program was performed twice.
Rebecca's play "Magic on Mainstreet" was presented in a program with three others on March 1 and then again on March 3. She worked with director Maria Glanz to stage the piece. In it, a grandfather teaches his grandson that you don't have to go off to exotic lands to find magic. If you keep your eyes and mind open, you can find it right on your own main street.
Rebecca, the only middle-school student in this year's festival, has a variety of interests. She takes karate lessons in Magnolia and participates in the Magnolia Theatre Company, but writing has always been most important to her. What she particularly likes about it is the fact that it allows her to make anything happen.
It's not surprising that she would like a career in writing; however, she's practical enough to know its pitfalls. "I am going to need a solid job, maybe teaching acting, because if nobody likes my writing, I'd still be able to make a living." She doesn't, however, reject the notion of an acting career.
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