New festival seeks to engage local high school students in the arts/theater

Updated February 24, 2022, 2:35pm

A Young Playwrights Festival, presented by the Northport Arts Coalition (NAC) and the John W. Engeman Theater, has put out a call for submissions open to all Huntington township high school students. It’s the first year of what Amy Connor, NAC’s new executive director, hopes becomes an annual event.

The festival aims to fulfill one of NAC’s new goals: to appeal to and engage more young people in the arts, both as participants and as audiences, Amy told the Journal.

“The arts can and should be more than just a special performance attended a few times a year,” she said. “They're a vital part of life and we hope that by involving people at an early age we can help them integrate the arts into their everyday lives.”

Amy said Engeman Theater owner and producing artistic director Richard Dolce was very enthusiastic when NAC approached him in September about the festival; since then the NAC has begun contacting high school theater programs, as well as students not normally involved in theater. “We've created all our advertising materials in both English and Spanish, we've reached out to teachers of ESL/ENL as well as to advisors of multicultural clubs and organizations within the schools, and we've sent materials to various Huntington youth organizations outside the school districts,” she said.

Each submitted play will be read and critiqued by theatrical and literary professionals; young playwrights will receive feedback by April 1, 2022 with four to six plays chosen to receive a professional staged reading at the Engeman Theater in May.

The playwrights chosen to receive a staged reading of their plays will be completely involved in the process, Amy explained. Each play will have a director who will work with the author on any suggested revisions and students will be invited to attend auditions and rehearsals, including any technical rehearsals at the theater before the festival performance.

Submissions to the Young Playwrights Festival must be the original work of the author (no adaptations) and no longer than 20 minutes. The competition is open to all Huntington township high school students including those attending in Cold Spring Harbor, Commack, Elwood (John Glenn), Half Hollow Hills East, Half Hollow Hills West, Harborfields, Huntington, Northport-East Northport, South Huntington (Walt Whitman) and St Anthony’s. The deadline for submissions has been extended to March 15, 2022.

For more information on the submission process, including how and where to submit, visit the NAC’s Young Playwrights Festival webpage. Tickets for the festival performance go on sale April 1, 2022.