By Sidney Reynolds
On Oct. 16, sophomore English honor students started their first session of the New Voice Playwriting program. This is the first time at FC that English classes have gotten to take part in this program. The New Voice project is a program helps develop students’ creative writing ability.
“I think it helped me become a better creative writer,” said sophomore Jacob Huntles.
Actors Theatre of Louisville sends trained instructors to teach students about play writing and help them write their own 10-minute play. At the end of the program some students will get the honor of having actors from Actors Theatre of Louisville to come and perform their play in front of the class.
“It was awesome. I feel so honored to be one of the first students at FC to be able to take part in this,” said sophomore Sylvia Donovan.
The two New Voice instructors that taught the classes were Keith McGill and Liz Fentress.
“It’s been a wonderful experience for me. I love that I helped create a play from nothing and got to watch it develop,” said Fentress.
The students started the first session with the discussion of every element that goes into a play.
“I really love how it was taught step by step so no one gets confused or lost,” said sophomore Harleigh Lang.
The students also wrote two monologues to help understand more about the purpose of monologues. The first monologue was about an object to help them learn how to write a monologue. The second monologue was a character monologue and to help them get more in depth.
“It was fun to be creative and have people read mine,” said sophomore Caleb Combs.
At the third session students started to write the draft of their play.
“I had to write down a couple of ideas before I could really pick one,” said Donovan.
In the fifth session, students did a plot diagram of their play and then they started to write the first two pages of their ten page play.
“At first, I was overwhelmed because I’m not a very creative person so it was kind of scary for me at first,” said sophomore Kelsey Lengel.
On Oct. 30 students went over their first draft. They had the instructors, teachers, and peers edit their drafts.
Lang thought was really helpful to get feedback on my play from McGill, her english teacher Anne Martin, and her peers.
“It told me what was strong about my play and what I needed to change. I am also glad they were there to help me with formatting my play,” said Lang.
On Nov. 2 actors from Actors Theatre of Louisville came to perform the students’ plays.
“It was interesting to see professional actors perform plays that my peers wrote,” said Huntles.
Many students enjoyed watching the plays be performed, however when student’s own plays were performed, it made them nervous.
“It was kind of interesting but kind of awkward,” said sophomore Kayla Popson.
Sophomore honors English teacher Anne Martin enjoyed working with this program.
“It’s nice to have new voices in the room and many of the activities in the curriculums that allow students to see what good writers they are,” said Martin.
They also are hoping that next year actors from Louisville’s Actors Theatre will come and do the program again next year only for all sophomore English classes.
“There has been talk that they will try and get the same grant to be able to do all sophomore English classes next year,” said Martin.
Many students believe New Voices was a good program to participate in.
“I’m glad that I got to do it. It was so much fun and I think it helped my writing skills too.” said Lang.