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. 6: Ryan McCormick

School: Fort Collins High School

Teacher: Jason Tyler

Play title: The Window on the Fourth Wall

What is your play about? A brother and sister try to convince their seemingly senile father to move into a retirement home.

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

Excerpt: “OK, I see what this is. Crazy old man thinks there are people watching him. Well, I can assure you both that isn’t me. Your dear old Dad may have a few screws lose, but he’s no paranoid nut.”

Killer casting: I would cast Steve Buscemi in every role purely to see a Buscemi one man show.

What did you learn from writing this play? That drama doesn’t come from conflict but rather a character’s response to conflict.

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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 (to date):
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
Bonus: Read about 2014 winning teen playwright Laurain Park

COMING MONDAY: MEET SCENESTER NO. 7!

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