Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

If you’re looking for something a bit different to do over the next week, I highly recommend taking in the Young Dramatists’ Project at the Gorilla Theatre. It consists of five short plays written by local teenagers and directed by some of the area’s best local theater professionals, including David O’Hara, Ami Sallee Corley and Karla Hartley.

Now in its eighth year, the project is a gift to the local artistic community from Susan Hussey and Aubrey Hampton, who own the Gorilla. The competition is open to all Bay area middle and high school students. Winners get their plays produced along with mentoring from the project’s dramaturge (and very talented playwright) James Rayfield, as well as royalties for the production and paid membership into the Dramatist Guild. It’s really a great way to discover and nurture new talent, and the talent I saw in these plays is pretty impressive.

I went Wednesday night, which was a dress rehearsal and fundraiser for another good karma and very worthy organization, Sierra Club Inner City Outings, which introduces city kids to nature through guided hikes, kayaking, camping trips and other stuff. The whole evening, including a 15-minute intermission is about an hour and a half long and costs a mere $15. For that, you will see five very different and compelling short plays.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to be impressed, or even terribly entertained. I’ve been to plenty of kid-written performances over the years and usually they fall on the pleasure scale somewhere between watching bowling on tv and mowing the lawn at noon in July.

But each one of these five plays was good. The first was Order by Sierra Almengual, a junior at Shorecrest. It’s a short, dark piece about two brothers that reminded me a little bit of Sam Shepard’s True Grit. Next was Aftershots by Blake HS sophomore Elizabeth Klette, which takes place after a Colombine-style shooting at a high school and explores the way various subcultures react. I was especially impressed with the way Ms. Klette captured the distinct voices and perspectives of a nerd, an emo girl, a black kid, an overachiever, a skater, a prep and a jock. Fable de Veras by Eric Davis (senior at Palm Harbor UHS) was an artistically ambitious look at a young girl born in the US to Mexican parents. Shorecrest junior Alexander Nunnelly’s Red Cross was a polished gem featuring a Red Cross rescue worker with a secret and the woman he is trying to save against her will.

Gabriel Neustadt’s Destruction Room ends the evening with a bang–literally. Actually several bangs. It’s a sophisticated and wry satire that takes on the power and commercialization of violence, and if you didn’t know it had been written by a junior at Shorecrest high school, you might well imagine an older, more experienced playwright had written it.

If you have ever complained that Tampa is a cultural wasteland, you owe it to yourself and to the cultural life of this area to support the Gorilla Theatre, the Young Dramatists’ Project, and these young talents (and the actors are just as impressive as the directors and playwrights, btw). It’s only fifteen bucks and less than two hours of your time. Plus, you can have a glass of wine, a beer or a brownie while you’re watching the show in a cool, dark, air conditioned place. What have you got to lose?

Gorilla Theatre is in Drew Park, and the production runs through June 8.

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