Festival to feature plays by local students
A play by Brooklyn Rutledge, a student at Paloma Valley High School in Menifee, is the 2022 winner in the Palm Springs Young Playwrights Festival.
Rutledge’s play, “Main Character,” is a “play within a play” about mean girls in high school who are not so mean after all.
A staged reading of the comedy, plus readings of three winning plays from 2021, will be presented at noon June 12 at the Palm Springs Cultural Center, performed by professional actors.
Tickets are free, but reservations are required, at brownpapertickets.com/event/5418940. The winning 2021 plays are “Brotherly Love” by Jadelynn Okialda-Simmons of Hans Christensen Middle School in Menifee, asking how far someone will go to protect and defend family; “Trapped” by Cal Vaughan of Palm Springs High School, imagining how two teenagers, in different homes during a pandemic, maintain a relationship while living with families who don’t understand the nature of gender identity; and “Gotcha” by Yamani Scoggins of Valley View High School in Moreno Valley, in which a teenager looks to the internet for comfort and connection after the murder of her brother.
The Palm Springs Young Playwrights Festival promotes theatrical creative writing for elementary, middle and high school students in Riverside County.
Xuan-Anh Ly Biggs, an Alumni Advisory Board member and 2020 winner, will host this year’s festival with David Youse, the festival’s executive director.
Actors performing the staged readings include Mark Espinoza of NBC’s “The Endgame”; Joyce Bulifant, known for her roles on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the films “The Happiest Millionaire” and “Airplane!”; Yo Younger, a multiple Desert Theatre
League award winner; and David Kaufman, known for Nickelodeon’s animated series “Danny Phantom,” among others.
The professional actors will be joined by student actors from Palm Springs High School, including Danielle Blunt, Grace Hernandez, Mia Lascano, Duncan McVeigh and Hellena Soto, according to a news release.
The Palm Springs Young Playwrights Festival is a nonprofit organization that provides scholarships to further education in the arts, mentorship and a public reading to young playwrights.
For more information, go to psypf.com.