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player ready...Four original scripts, centering on contemporary themes and selected from more than 300 entries, will be presented Tuesday through Jan. 23 at the 8th annual Pegasus Players Young Playwrights Festival.
The plays will be staged with professional actors, directors and technical personnel under the mainstage coordination of Gary Griffin, according to Rita Thomson, coordinator of the Young Playwrights program.
The site will be the O’Rourke Center for the Performing Arts, 1145 W. Wilson Ave. (For information, call 312-271-2638.)
Two of the playwrights are from Lane Technical High School. Maria Hernandez’ “Sand” is a story of two isolated teenagers, trying to come to terms with their identities, who help each other survive during a time of loss.
Jennifer Asiadao’s “Fish and Rice” concerns a Filipino-American girl who struggles to balance her two cultures during the time of her sister’s marriage to an American.
Also being produced are “My Self or Myself,” by Latisha Hester and Spencer Gould of Oliver Harvey Middle College, a Romeo-and-Juliet-like interracial love story; and “Beef Jerky,” by Ayanna Saulsberry of Gallery 37, about a young woman whose involvement with her drug-dealing boyfriend-and her subsequent pregnancy-leads to an explosive confrontation with her abusive father. “Beef Jerky,” incidentally, won first place in the NAACP Black Cultural Olympics in Chicago, and third place nationwide.