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.) Tomorrow: Scenester profile No. 4.

SCENESTER NO. 3: JASMIN A. HERNANDEZ LOZANO

• School: Vista Peak Preparatory Academy in Aurora
• Class: Sophomore
• Teacher: Heathe Stecklein
• Your play title: The Boy on the Tree
  
• What is your play about? It’s a remake of Rapunzel, with the genders reversed. Instead of there being a beautiful maiden with long hair in a tower, you have a boy named Aspen in a tree that signifies the tower. Instead of their being an evil witch to trap Rapunzel, this boy’s own fear of life takes his freedom from him. A girl named Willow comes to this tree often, but she never receives a response. One day they both discover that silence between two people who care is the best cure for heartbreak. 
• What was your inspiration for writing your play? There was a prompt I saw that asked us to write a story keeping in mind a fairy tale. I had just watched Rapunzel and, well, the rest is history.  
• Favorite word that appears in your script: “Silence” It’s not unusual to most, but it’s a word I just barely have gotten used to.
• Killer casting: It would definitely be Logan Lerman (pictured right) playing Aspen. He usually plays parts with boys who overcome their fears, and that’s exactly what Aspen’s trying to do: Become the stereotype society put for men of being strong and brave, yet since he can’t he hides instead.
• What did you learn from writing this play? I learned there are worlds we haven’t explored yet. And that people with sad memories have the best stories.”

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