A Longmont middle-schooler partnered with a Boulder Valley School District middle-schooler and produced an award-winning play that will be performed next month.
Summit Middle School’s Sarah Zhou and Flagstaff Academy Charter School’s Elyse Prestopnik co-wrote a play titled “The New Kids,” for a statewide writing competition and won. The play will be performed June 25 at the House of Cellista, 734 Gay St., in Longmont. All residents are welcomed to the showing and there is no charge. House of Cellista will have a tip jar available for those who would like to donate, and the proceeds will go to the performing artists.
“It’s just incredible and amazing that we won, I never expected that, but I think our passion for working together and writing helped us win,” Prestopnik said.
Zhou said, “I think it was our friendship and ability to bounce ideas off of each other that helped us make such a good play.”
Prestopnik’s teacher, Terri Reh, introduced her to Denver Center for the Performing Arts Director David Saphier during a creative writing class. Saphier, who also is a writer and artist, taught a playwright workshop for students at Flagstaff Academy and then invited the middle school students to submit a one-act play to an annual competition at the performing arts center.
It’s the first time the DCPA AT&T Playwrighting Competition was open to middle school students, and out of hundreds of submissions from across Colorado, the lifelong best friends were one of three middle schoolers to win the competition.
Flagstaff Academy spokeswoman Lisa Trank-Greene said, “What these young ladies did was pretty amazing because they have been best friends since preschool and even during the coronavirus pandemic they were able to still connect in a very meaningful way.”
Although they are in different schools, the duo said they knew they wanted to work on this project together and would love to work on future projects together.
“It was a good test of friendship and creativity,” Prestopnik said. “Sarah made it fun with her ideas about Elmer and made me laugh a lot during the process.”
Zhou added, “But it was also a way to deepen our friendship because we learned more about ourselves and each other during this process.”
“The New Kids” is about a sister, Evelyn, and brother, Elmer, who were enrolled at a new middle school and together navigate through starting fresh at a new school and making new friends.
“I’ve never had to start at a new school, so for me it was sometimes difficult to relate, but I have made friends with people who have moved to my school,” Prestopnik explained.
“We thought it would be challenging and fun to write about something neither of us had experienced before since neither of us have siblings nor have we been the new kids at a school,” Zhou said.
The most challenging part of the process was coordinating times to work together with their busy middle school schedules, extracurricular activities and pandemic restrictions.
“It was not linear or clear sometimes because I would have to go to this or that on one day and Sarah was free but then the next day we had opposite schedules, so it was sometimes frustrating not being able to always connect when we needed to or wanted to,” Prestopnik said.
“Yeah for me it was writer’s block a lot but also the scheduling,” Zhou added, “We managed though through electronics and email for it all to finally come together better than what we envisioned.”
The girls had some advice for budding writers: “Don’t limit yourself because you don’t know what you are capable of doing until you actual start doing it,” Prestopnik said.
Zhou added, “Push yourself beyond your comfort zone and don’t be afraid to do something you are unfamiliar with.”
As for what their future holds, Prestopnik said, “Right now I think I want to be a writer, but I’m still only 12-years-old so I have time to figure that out.”
Zhou said, “I don’t know what I want to be just yet. Today it’s an astronaut, and tomorrow it could be a dancer, but I also think I have time to figure that out, but I wouldn’t mind writing more.”
The best part about the play, according to both girls, was getting to work on a meaningful project with each other.
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May 27, 2021 at 10:30AM
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Two middle schoolers — one in BVSD, the other in Longmont — author award-winning play - Longmont Times-Call
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