Today on Denver CenterStage, we continue our exciting daily countdown of the 10  student playwrights have been named semifinalists for our second annual statewide playwriting competition. (Details below.)

Scenester No. 10: Kendra Knapp

School: Valor Christian high school

Teacher: Mr. Kurt Muenstermann

Play title: The Suburbs

What is your play about? Two regular kids and the odd “new girl” who moves in next door.

Favorite word that appears in your script: “Meatloaf.”

Excerpt: “Haven’t you dreamed of flying? Somehow I feel that in a life of flying, one doesn’t really need arms.”

Killer casting: Summer Glau (Firefly, Serenity), because several of her past roles have her playing the “weird” girl, and she plays the type well.  She would be Meadowlark because I want Meadowlark to be simply … off. And Summer has proven she can play that archetype well.

What did you learn from writing this play? That writing isn’t as hard as I thought. I’ve always struggled with writing essays, but I now know I struggled because I wasn’t motivated to write them. I didn’t get to choose what I wrote about, or how to write.

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About the Denver Center’s 2014 Regional Youth Playwriting Workshop and Competition:

What: “Your Story. Our Stage”: A one-act playwriting competition designed for area high schools. Local playwrights and DCPA Education staff members taught 143 playwriting workshops in 45 Colorado high schools. More than 2,899 high-school students participated in those workshops, which were held in every school district in the Denver-metro area and in 13 counties, including Chafee, Larimer and Las Animas.

Why: To nurture Colorado’s young playwrights; develop theatre artists and audiences; develop new plays; and advance literacy, creativity, writing and communication through playwriting.

How: A total of 158 submissions were judged blindly by DCPA artistic, literary and education professionals. Ten semifinalists are being identified through this rolling daily countdown. At the end of the countdown, three winners will be named. They will receive a cash scholarship of $250 each AND a staged reading in the 2014 Colorado New Play Summit next month. In addition, each teacher of the three finalists will receive a $250 gift certificate for books, supplies or other teaching tools for their classrooms. One play also will be presented as a fully staged performance exercise for DCPA Education students in the summer of 2015.

Our complete countdown of 2015 semifinalists:
No. 1: Christina Arias of Kunsmiller Creative Arts Academy
No. 2: Joshua Contreras, Gunnison High School
No. 3: Keely Kritz of Denver School of the Arts
No. 4: Nathan Mast, Thomas B. Doherty High School
No. 5: Kiana Trippler, Thunder Ridge High School
No. 6: Ryan McCormick, Fort Collins High School
No. 7: Kaytlin Camp, Gunnison High School
No. 8: Jack Hansen, Arapahoe High School
No. 9: Catherine Novotny, Grandview High School
No. 10: Kendra Knapp, Valor Christian High School
Bonus: Read about 2014 winning teen playwright Laurain Park

COMING FRIDAY: LEARN WHICH THREE SCENESTERS WILL HAVE THEIR PLAYES READ AT THE 2015 COLORADO NEW PLAY SUMMIT!

Video from the teen play readings at the 2014 Colorado New Play Summit