Hello all! This is Alec Chase, one of the Promising Playwrights from this year’s JAW festival, and let me just tell you what a wonderful festival it turned out to be! The amount of talent that I was exposed to every day left me stunned and open-mouthed.

I cannot begin to tell you how much of a privilege this was to me. Truly, I’ve never had this kind of experience. Rarely am I given the chance to do anything like this, and so to hear that I was one of just six students invited to take part in this festival was so shocking to me. I was nervous, excited, ecstatic and intimidated all at the same time. To be given this kind of opportunity was certainly mind-blowing.

It was astounding how professionally I was treated by everyone! I’m extremely appreciative of how much the Promising Playwrights were included into everyone’s processes. For example, it was very flattering when playwright Marc Acito and director Chris Coleman invited me to join them and their cast and crew at their table during one of their rehearsals. The experience was a wonderful treat.

Certainly, the two weeks that I spent at Portland Center Stage have proven to be the highlight of my summer, and I feel that new doors have been opened. I plan to take the play that I composed at the festival and use it for further purposes. I’ll be a senior at Cleveland High School next year, and as we have a Senior-Directed One-Acts production at my school, I have hopes to use this script for my own one-act. Or possibly, I might take the techniques and knowledge that I’ve learned at PCS and create something completely new.

Thank you all, especially to Matt Zrebski and Michael O’Connell for being such wonderful mentors, to Kelsey Tyler for producing the festival, and to Rose Riordan for leading us all to glory and greatness as festival director. I had a blast!

Thank you for giving me a summer to remember. -Alec Chase

Matt wanted all of us to send in our thoughts on JAW. I just wanted to thank you for giving me the opportunity to be a part of last week. As if getting another chance to write for a reading at PCS wasn’t enough, I got to hang out with a theater full of amazing people. I can’t say which part was better, watching the twelve plays grow towards the weekend’s readings or getting to chat with the hordes of talented artists about those plays. It was one of the most inspiring weeks of my life, I can say that much. Two weeks ago I was planning on majoring in Film Production in college, but I’m going to have to rethink that. Film doesn’t provide environments like a theater. I want to work to find more communities like the one I experienced the week of JAW. – Ivy Knight

More About JAW || Follow the JAW Blog || 2009 Big Weekend Events