PLAY/WRITE

Field Notes: PLAY/WRITE and the Radical Act of Taking Kids Seriously

There's a moment in every PLAY/WRITE showcase when the room shifts. A professional actor delivers a line — something a ten-year-old wrote, something specific and strange and entirely their own — and the audience, full of kids who came on a field trip and weren't sure what to expect, goes absolutely electric. They recognize it. They know that voice. Maybe it's their friend's. Maybe it sounds like theirs.

That moment is the whole point.

PLAY/WRITE is Relative Theatrics' arts education initiative, now in its third year in Laramie. The program works with students at five elementary schools — Linford, Rock River, Slade, Spring Creek, and Indian Paintbrush — over a twenty-week residency, guiding 4th, 5th, and 6th graders through the full arc of dramatic writing: prewriting, drafting, revision, publication. At the end, each student receives a bound, professionally formatted copy of their own play. And nine of those plays get performed at Buchanan Center for the Performing Arts and the University of Wyoming — by professional theatre and dance companies, in front of a real audience.

This spring, ALCES was glad to show up in support. We provided creative prop support, tech assistance, and hospitality — food and drinks for the adult actors and crew who gave their time and craft to making kids' words come alive on stage. It was, honestly, one of the more joyful things we've been part of this year.

ALCES believes that communities need places where people are trusted as creative agents — where the thing they make is taken seriously, not as a cute gesture, but as actual art. PLAY/WRITE does that for kids in a way that's rare and worth paying attention to. The program doesn't ask students to write about assigned topics or perform someone else's vision. It asks them what they want to say, teaches them the tools to say it, and then puts professional resources behind the result.

That's not a small thing. That's a model for how arts education can work when it respects its participants.

We're proud to be neighbors to Relative Theatrics in this community, and proud to have played even a small supporting role in this year's showcase. If you haven't seen PLAY/WRITE, find a way to next year. Bring someone who needs reminding that Laramie is full of people—young ones especially—with something worth saying.

Partners include: Relative Theatrics, Linford, Rock River, Slade, Spring Creek, and Indian Paintbrush Elementary Schools, UW Performing Arts, The Unexpected Project