How this Kansas City-area theater offers young playwrights a unique chance on stage

When you think of the theater, you might picture the actors doing their thing on stage. At the Spinning Tree Theatre, one program is giving young playwrights their moment in the spotlight.

“We were looking to work with kids that weren’t just interested in being actors,” said Michael Grayman-Parkhurst, producing artistic director and co-founder at Spinning Tree.

The Young Playwrights Lab not only gives teens the opportunity to work with an established playwright to develop a piece but guarantees that work will be onstage as part of the Spinning Tree’s upcoming season.

Each teen can come in with an idea, a partially developed piece or simply start from scratch on the first day of the program. Typically participants are juniors or seniors in high school.

“They just want this experience of a journey, a beginning to then seeing their words read back to them, to seeing them produced on the stage, to adding all the professional design elements to it. I think they love the idea of where it can go in the process,” Grayman-Parkhurst said.

For five days in a row, each selected teen meets one on one with his or her playwright mentor for several hours. After that, the teen works independently, periodically meeting with the mentor over the next few months until finalizing it before rehearsals start in January.

The finished pieces typically range from 10 to 35 minutes.

One special thing the program does is bring in actors partway through that initial week, so the young playwright can hear how the words on the page might sound in a performance and make adjustments.

This year, three teens got the chance to develop their work this way. One is 16-year-old Gabe Baethke, a student at Blue Valley North. He’s written short stories before, but this is his first time writing a play.

“I just thought it would be a good way to develop my discipline for writing and understand structure better,” Baethke said.

He’d been thinking of the idea for his play about a sentient cello and its dysfunctional owner for a few weeks but said the urgency of needing to write for each daily mentoring session helped motivate him to finish a draft.

Local playwright Frank Higgins, who taught at the University of Missouri-Kansas City for 22 years, became his Spinning Tree mentor.

Higgins tried to bring his experience to the table almost by doing a mini-master class of what goes into writing a play, then playing off of what Baethke had to offer.

“You kind of get it into your DNA a sense of what works best on stage as opposed to fiction or a movie. When a play is doing the things that a play can do best, it’s better than movie or a novel,” Higgins said. “What I thought Gabe came up with is right in the spirit of what theater can really do best. I was amazed how quickly the week went by.”

Baethke learned from Higgins how to be more efficient with his words. “Having every line of dialogue contribute, and if it doesn’t, you remove it, you change or replace it. Everything has a goal,” he said.

The process isn’t just a one-way street. Higgins appreciated the young playwright’s company as much as Baethke enjoyed getting a chance to learn from his mentor.

“What I really enjoyed was that Gabe was open to hearing new ideas, but it was also the case he knew what he wanted,” Higgins said. “It’s looking at a young artist, who is early in path of making discoveries and developing his own aesthetic, and it’s a real pleasure when you have somebody who is curious and wants to know more.”

All the work developed through this year’s Young Playwrights Lab will be part of a show Jan. 31 to Feb. 2 at the Spinning Tree Theatre. For ticket information, visit spinningtreetheatre.com.

This story was originally published September 4, 2024 at 5:00 AM.