Hello, and welcome back to the Poetic Diabetic! Since I last wrote, I’ve not only finally finished my junior year of high school (and, my gosh, what a doozy that was), but I’ve also had the opportunity to partake in a plethora of interesting summer experiences, including the VSA Young Playwrights Discovery Program.
For those who are unfamiliar, VSA (which stands for Very Special Arts) is a disability-focused subsidiary organization within the larger Kennedy Center—not the space center in Brevard County, but the American Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Each year, VSA selects six disabled high school playwrights nationwide based on a ten-minute play submission. Naturally, I qualified for this contest due to my diabetes, but my play didn’t necessarily need to related to the concept of disability; I submitted my one-act, Sentient, about a melancholic chatbot growing against their malintentioned creator.
Playwrights are then flown out to the Kennedy Center, where we work alongside a professional dramaturg (mine was the spectacular Fiona Rose Murphey), VSA project coordinators, and dozens of others in the performing arts world, in a three-day writing workshop.
Before any of the actual travel, I got the chance to meet my cohorts and some of the project organizers over a Zoom call in April, during which we got to hear our selected plays read aloud by professional actors. It was a remarkably enlightening experience hearing my play performed, almost like looking through a new perspective at a pre-existing art piece.
This reading gave me a chance to find the errors in my writing—the parts that failed to flow or contribute to a greater narrative—and correct them; according to Fiona, that was the intent of the exercise.
After months of waiting and multiple online workshops with my dramaturg, July 8th, the first day of the program, finally came. Our first day started with re-introductions and another staged reading of our plays, followed swiftly by presentations about the lighting, costuming, staging, and sound design for our plays from designers who’ve worked with the Kennedy Center. My play specifically received an auditory scratch track from Sarah O’Halloran, and if the staged reading was a different perspective on an existing painting, then this scratch track was like watching the painting jump off its parchment and spring to life.
All these painting metaphors aren’t just meaningless babble, either. VSA doesn’t only offer a program for playwright discovery but also a program for emerging disabled artists. As part of their initiative, selected artworks are featured in a traveling exhibition called “Interchange,” which we spent the rest of the evening exploring.
The next morning, we had a writing workshop with playwright Psalmayene 24 and an advocacy 101 workshop with speakers from the Kennedy Center’s Office of Government Relations and Social Impact team.
Following these two activities, we were shuttled off to the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater to watch the national tour of the “Funny Girl” Broadway revival. At the risk of this turning into a full-blown review, the lead actress, Katerina McCrimmon, managed to take a dated and somewhat slow script and transform it into a glorious spectacle through her one-of-a-kind performance. “Funny Girl” will be touring at the Kravis Center from January 28th to February 5th, and I’d highly recommend checking it out!
On our third and final day, we had our industry encounters with four different disabled creatives, ranging from hip-hop artist Wawa to multi-hyphenated performer Regan Linton. We got the chance to introduce ourselves and learn how disabilities can be incorporated into countless creative avenues.
All good things must come to an end, however. Shortly after these final meetings, we playwrights got a chance to check in with our dramaturgs one last time before we parted ways and went back to our hometowns (though not without exchanging contacts first). Though my time at VSA was brief, I learned lessons regarding my identity as both a person with a disability and as a creative that’ll last my whole life.
In essence, if you have the time, please consider looking into both the Kennedy Center and VSA. Also, if you’re a high schooler with a passion for writing or art, consider submitting to one of these contests! Theater is a bit of a threatened medium right now, and the work that these organizations are doing is truly spectacular. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you back here for the next article! See you next time, from one diabetic to another!
