Annual Benefit celebrates 22 years of tapping the potential of youth through playwriting, features Pulitzer Prize finalist & Tony Award nominee Quiara Alegría Hudes with performances by winning young playwrights from across the region

In celebration of its 22nd year, Philadelphia Young Playwrights will hold its annual benefit, Write On! A Celebration of Student Voices, on Wednesday, June 3rd from 6:00 - 8:30 p.m. at World Café Live (3025 Walnut Street, Philadelphia). The celebration will highlight the transformative effects of the Philadelphia Young Playwrights experience and feature the inspiring voices of past and present winning young playwrights, as the organization salutes some of the remarkable advocates who have made a lasting impact on the organization.

As part of the Write On! Celebration, Philadelphia Young Playwrights will honor Governor Edward G. Rendell with its Civics Award, recognizing the Governor’s strong education platform and his stewardship of the Pennsylvania Educational Improvement Tax Credit Program. The benefit will also feature Young Playwrights’ alum Quiara Alegría Hudes, whose work In the Heights was nominated for a 2008 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical and 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

In addition to Governor Rendell’s Civics Award, Young Playwrights will highlight the achievements of Philadelphia City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown with the Young Playwrights Advocate Award for her extraordinary efforts on behalf of youth and her work in establishing The Fund for Children at the Philadelphia Foundation. Anne Spector will receive the President’s Award for Special Achievement, for her work as an educator, administrator and advocate of Young Playwrights programming in the Cheltenham School District, and the Beverly Hills Middle School playwriting team of student Moses Adenaike, teacher Toni Ruddy, and PYP teaching artist Jan Michener will be honored with the Adele Magner Memorial Award, given each year to a student, teacher and teaching artist for their exemplary collaboration, perseverance and transformation in the program.

Write On! will open with a cocktail reception featuring music by the Westminster Jazz Ensemble, followed by an awards ceremony and live performance. Young Playwrights’ resident director, Myra Bazell, co-director of Philadelphia’s SCRAP Performance Group, will direct the award presentation and professional staged performances of plays by winning young playwrights. Student board member Nathan Wainstein and former student board member Nia Davis, both former winning playwrights, will serve as the onstage hosts.

This year, several of the Write On! featured plays will explore themes of racial, cultural and ethnic diversity. Selections from winning plays include the monologue Torn Between by Aimee Leong, about the conflict a teenage Asian girl encounters while deciding whether to stay in her interracial relationship or abide by her family’s wishes. Now an 11th grader at Center City’s Science Leadership Academy, Leong’s story was one of seventeen winning monologues presented at April’s 2009 Young Voices High School Monologue Festival, a collaboration of PYP and Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre Company. Emily Acker’s play Milk & Honey tells the story of two boys, one an Israeli, the other a Palestinian, who form a relationship despite their opposing worlds. Acker wrote her play while in 11th grade at The Baldwin School in Bryn Mawr. She is currently a program intern at Philadelphia Young Playwrights and served as a special guest speaker at the organization’s 2008 Artistic Team Retreat.

Other play selections include Big Brained Billy-Bob-Joe-Fred… and Bob, a play written by 3rd grade students at Glenside Elementary School and presented in collaboration with the Arden Theatre Co. as part of PYP’s Saturday Morning Reading Series. The play tells the story of a hunter named Big Brained Billy-Bob-Joe-Fred, who is afraid of people, and befriends a Chinese water dragon named Bob who helps him with his problems.

Young Playwrights' Alum and board member Quiara Alegría Hudes will share a song from her new Kennedy Center co-commissioned musical for children titled Barrio Grrrl! The play, which will premiere in October 2009, follows spunky 9-year-old Ana and her imaginary friend, Amazing Voice, who dedicate their lives to saving the barrio.

Born and raised in West Philadelphia and a student of Central High School, Hudes was a 1993 Young Playwrights Playwriting Festival winner. She holds degrees from Yale and Brown Universities, is a resident writer at New Dramatists, and a previous Page 73 Playwriting Fellow. Hudes is currently writing the screenplay of In the Heights for Universal Pictures and the second and third plays in the Elliot trilogy, which began with Elliot, a Soldier's Fugue, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2007.

On the morning of June 4, 2009 following the benefit, Hudes will receive a special proclamation recognizing her artistry and achievements in front of Philadelphia City Council. The proclamation is co-sponsored by Write On! award recipient and Young Playwrights board member Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown and Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez.

Founded in 1987 by Adele Magner, and led today by Executive Producing Director Glen Knapp, Philadelphia Young Playwrights is an award-winning program that taps the potential of youth and inspires learning through playwriting in up to 50 public and private K-12 schools each year. Now in its 22nd year, the organization remains the only theater arts program in the region promoting literacy through playwriting and supporting the development of each student’s distinctive voice.

Each year, the Young Playwrights program pairs Philadelphia-based theater professionals with individual classroom teachers and works closely with them to integrate playwriting into the curriculum. By teaching students to draw on their own personal experiences and imaginations during the creation of their plays, Young Playwrights helps them improve their writing, literacy and problem solving skills while simultaneously strengthening self-expression.

The impact of Young Playwrights’ multifaceted and in-depth classroom programming is evident in the story of the 2009 Adele Magner Memorial Award recipients. Teacher Toni Ruddy and PYP teaching artist Jan Michener have been working together as an Artistic Team in the Young Playwrights program for three years with students at Beverly Hills Middle School. Located in Upper Darby, the school has a diverse student body and includes students of Middle-Eastern, Latino, Indian, Asian, Caribbean, African American and African descent, among other ethnic and racial backgrounds. Winning young playwright Moses Adenaike, whose family emigrated to the U.S. from Liberia, penned his play A Murderous Bond, while an 8th grader at the school.

Amidst an underlying story of young love, A Murderous Bond explores feelings of alienation and is based upon Adenaike’s life experiences as a student from Liberia facing racial pressures from African American students. “I’d heard there were tensions between the African students and the African American students [at Beverly Hills],” says teacher Toni Ruddy. “Here was a voice to that violence, an outrage mixed with a love story told in a choreo-poetic drama... Jan [Michner] and I both recognized the potential and the genuine beauty in the raw product [of Mose’s play].”

Through his playwriting experience, Adenaike discovered new ways in which he could collaborate with his peers. He also had the opportunity to attend a Young Playwrights Revision Retreat, where he received feedback on his play from theatre professionals. “Looking back on eighth grade and realizing that all I wanted to do before [Young Playwrights] was fit in, I now realize that I was very ignorant to my own abilities,” says Moses Adenaike. “I had a story to tell and my way was the only way I could tell it, and Philadelphia Young Playwrights really helped me discover and express my uniqueness.”

Young Playwrights offers an antidote to diminishing arts education and places an incredibly compelling learning process in the eager hands of our young people. For many students, working with Young Playwrights is a life changing experience, shaping new views of themselves as writers, artists and successful individuals. When students write about their lives, they are empowered to change them. The program’s success can be measured by the growing level of self-confidence, increased literacy and community activism that its participants experience. PYP students’ voices and plays have powerful impacts upon audiences of all ages.

Young Playwrights’ programming is enhanced by the collaborative support of Philadelphia’s outstanding theater community. Longtime partners in the organization’s public presentations include Temple University Theaters and Philadelphia Theatre Company. In 2008/2009, the organization’s Play Development Series partners include the Arden Theatre Company, Drexel University, InterAct Theatre Company, Philadelphia Art Alliance, Philadelphia Theatre Workshop, University of the Arts, Walnut Street Theatre and The Wilma Theater.

Young Playwrights is a past recipient of 2005 and 1997 Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre Education and Community Service, a 2003 George Bartol Award for Excellence in Arts Education, a national “Points of Light” designation, and a 2004 Eastern University Award for Nonprofit Excellence.

Honorary Chairs of the Write On! Celebration are Sandra Dungee Glenn, Karen and William Kiefer, Virginia and Harvey Kimmel, and Richard and Diane Dalto Woosnam.

Write On! tickets start at $125, with admission for PYP students, alumni and teachers available for $50. Tickets can be purchased by calling Young Playwrights at (215) 665-9226 or visiting www.phillyyoungplaywrights.org. The benefit serves as a fundraiser for Young Playwrights’ programs throughout the year.

Generous support for Write On! is provided by award sponsors Beneficial Bank, Harmelin Media, Metro Philadelphia, and The Philadelphia Foundation. Advocates Circle Sponsors include Accordion Films, Henkels and McCoy Inc., Independence Foundation, Sheehan Events, and Target.