Nothing about this past year has been normal. (You’re welcome for that insightful news flash!) But for theater in Chicago, one of the constants every January is the Young Playwrights Festival with Pegasus Theatre Chicago, which opens the first week of the year and highlights three one-act plays crafted by students in Chicago-area high schools. The symmetry for the festival (headed up by Pegasus’s executive producing director, Ilesa Duncan) has always been pleasing to me at least: new year, new voices.
Florell was a finalist in a past YPF competition and decided to retake a drama class at Kenwood just to enter again. (He graduated from Kenwood this spring and is now taking a year off before college.) Though he says he usually writes backwards from the endings of his plays, he knew going into These Glass Lives (directed by Duncan) that “I definitely just wanted to humanize who is deemed as a criminal, or someone who creates chaos or whatever,” adding, “I’ve been subjected to certain injustices, being biracial.”
For Ziad, writing A Lady’s Facade gave her a chance to delve into the background of one of her favorite paintings: the Mona Lisa. Ziad, who is currently a senior at University of Chicago Laboratory School, took that fascination and ran with it when she got a writing prompt in her English class to “take something from history and turn it into a play.”
1/7-1/31: Thu-Sat 7 PM, Sun 4 PM (available streaming for 48 hours after purchase of selected performance), pegasustheatrechicago.org, $20 adults, $12 students age 22 and under.
