The 2017 Scenesters: Jessica Wood

 Scenesters Jessica Wood
Today at the DCPA NewsCenter, we continue our daily countdown of the 10 Colorado student playwrights who have been named semifinalists for our fourth annual statewide playwriting competition. On Jan. 13, we will announce the three scripts that will be read at the 2017 Colorado New Play Summit. (Details below.) Tuesday: Scenester profile No. 8.

SCENESTER NO. 7: JESSICA WOOD

  • School: Denver Christian School
  • Class: Senior
  • Teacher: Tami Zietse
  • Your play title: Chill Winds
  • A Scen Free Trial Log in Open Save Share Add to HubBETA Make the ads disappear. Try Royale for free!esters Jessica Wood 800 2What is your play about? It’s about the relationship between two sisters and their interactions with the residents of a small town on the eve of America’s entrance into World War II.
  • What was your inspiration for writing your play? I saw Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie with my school and was struck by how effective the use of sound can be in manipulating emotion. I attempted to write a play where action was secondary to sound, and where meaning was based as much on tone as dialogue.
  • Favorite word that appears in your script: “Chattanooga.” 
  • Killer casting: I would pick Sierra McCormick to play Eden because I think she’d do an excellent job portraying the intricacies of the character.
  • What did you learn from writing this play? I learned a whole lot about flower symbolism and more than I ever thought I’d need to know about the military drafting process before Pearl Harbor.
  • (Photo above and right: Jessica Wood, center, was one of three 2016 Scenester finalists along with Kendra Knapp, right, and Gabrielle Moore, right. To read Jessica’s 2015 Scenester profile, click here. She is also featured in the video below.)

A Scenesters Jessica Wood quote


Our countdown of the 2017 ‘Scenesters’ (to date):
No. 1: Sarah Shapard, Overland High School
No. 2: Ryan Patrick McCormick, Fort Collins High School

No. 3: Jasmin A. Hernandez Lozano, Vista Peak High School
No. 4: Abby Meyer and Nic Rhodes, Fossil Ridge High School
No. 5: Amelia Middlebrooks, Valor Christian High School
No. 6: Corinna Donovan and Walker Carroll, Crested Butte Community School

About the 2017 Regional High-School Playwriting Workshop and Competition:

What: A one-act playwriting competition designed for area high schools. Local playwrights and DCPA Education faculty taught 138 playwriting workshops in 46 Colorado high schools. More than 2,823 high-school students participated in those workshops, which were held in every school district in the Denver-metro area and in 15 counties around the state, including Gunnison, Garfield, El Paso, Chaffee and Ouray.

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 132 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 2016 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 2017.

Sponsors: Robert and Judi Newman/Newman Family Foundation with matching gifts from The Ross Foundation, June Travis and Transamerica.

Video: We talked with the three 2016 student playwriting finalists and looked in as their plays were read by professional actors at the 2016 Colorado New Play Summit in February. Video by John Moore and David Lenk for the DCPA NewsCenter.

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