Congratulations to Port St. Joe Middle School students:

Skyler Milton, 2011 (Florida Studio Theater) Young Playwrights Festival Winner

Dell Pickett, 2011 (Florida Studio Theater) Young Playwrights Festival Honorable Mention Award 

Both winning playwrights are students of Ruby Knox, language arts educator, Port St. Joe Middle School.

Students of Ann Comforter, High School Musical Theater Instructor, wrote three plays as a combined class assignment, after participating in a two day creative writing workshop conducted by Florida Studio Theater teaching artists. From the three plays, "The Fairy Tale Files" was chosen by Port St. Joe Musical Theater as their 2011 Spring performance. ( Directed by Ann Comforter)


Gulf Alliance for Local Arts (GALA) proudly presented the Florida Studio Theater’s (FST) highly successful WRITE A PLAY programs to five public schools in Gulf County.  Six teaching artists who are professional actors were here to cover the programs that ran Monday-Thursday, in February, 2011.

The WRITE A PLAY Program is an in-school arts initiative, designed to inspire students to be creative and to write plays. From the heartfelt "Girl with One Arm" to the hilarious "I Dreamed I Married a Chicken," both written by program students, these tender plays celebrate the poetic imagination of our youth. Last year, over 55,000 youth participated in this dynamic award-winning program.  At the end of the program, the students were encouraged to write and submit their own plays.  FST received plays from over 9,200 young playwrights in the State of Florida and around the world for the Young Playwrights Festival, which takes place each spring culminating the program.  Winning playwrights are awarded scholarships.
 
The one and two-day workshops for middle and high schools feature four introductory in-class workshops that includes playwriting, sketch-comedy or screenwriting residency.  Students in these four classrooms worked on the four elements of playwriting (setting, character, conflict, dialogue). Students also saw an example of a student-written play performed live in their classroom by FST teaching artists. Together, students and teaching artists brainstormed and improvised a short class play. Students who wanted to receive final comments and suggestions on how to improve their play, prior to submission to the Young Playwrights Festival, were able to send their finished scripts to Florida Studio Theater for a critique.
 
The elementary program featured a play performed for all students that inspires writing, setting, character, conflict and dialogue. Professional actors performed at least 2 award-winning plays written by youth as a model, in addition to using improvisation and participatory learning as tools to inspire writing. This show is meant to inspire students to write their own plays and participate in the 2011 Young Playwrights Festival.  Afterwards, 4 one-hour workshops in the classroom were scheduled, 100 % of teachers surveyed said the performance and workshops were  able to stir student's imagination and became a catalyst in motivating children to start writing immediatly upon getting back to class
 
One teacher-training workshop per school is geared to empower teachers and give them the tools necessary to establish a creative classroom.  All workshops fulfill the following strands outlined in the Sunshine State Standards:  Language Arts, Prewriting, Drafting, Revising, Editing for Language, Publishing Creative Writing, Listening and Speaking Theatre Arts, Creation and Communication.

Florida Studio Theatre's WRITE A PLAY Program is currently celebrating 18 years of inspiring children from Kindergarten to 12th Grade.

The program is presented and coordinated by Gulf Alliance for Local Arts (GALA) and sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional funding from Forgotten Coast Cultural Coalition.