Student one-act dramas make their debut on the BPA stage this Tuesday.

Young talent takes center stage Tuesday, when plays by four Bainbridge students are featured for Bainbridge Performing Arts’ Word Series.

Bainbridge High School juniors Allison Beemer and Elsie Love, together with Hyla Middle School eighth-graders John Murphy and Jackson Beall debut original scripts penned for Seattle’s ACT Theater Young Playwrights Program.

The students were among 300 youths from 14 Puget Sound schools who wrote one-act plays during a 10-week session last fall. The scripts were judged by a panel at ACT, with several selected to have excerpts read at the theater.

The Hyla students were enlisted by their drama teacher, Joyce Mycka-Stettler, who had acted and worked for ACT.

“This particular class of students, each one of them has their own voice as a writer,” she said said.

Bainbridge playwright Elizabeth Heffron, who helped develop the Young Playwrights Program, led both groups.

None of the neophyte BHS playwrights had done extensive creative writing, and none had ever tackled writing a script.

“I just signed up as an option to get honors credit,” Love said. “I don’t really consider myself to be a creative writer. I just thought it would be a new experience.”

Before students could be immobilized with writer’s block, Heffron launched into a series of exercises designed to free the creative imagination. First, the students engaged in what Mycka-Stettler calls “on your feet” games.

“We did exercises to get used to saying what was on our minds,” Beall said, “not holding back and being shy. Because I know I’m shy and I usually don’t do random things like that. But it got us doing that. And once we got into the writing, things all fell into place.”

For one exercise, Heffron brought photographs, and assigned students to construct a scene from the subject matter. A character study emerged from the contents of a bag, the belongings of a hypothetical person.

In another exercise, students were given several lines, and encouraged to build scenes around that prompt. That assignment turned into Beemer’s full-length play.

“When I went into it, I was really stressing out about ‘what am I going to write about? I don’t have any ideas,’” Beemer said. “But Elizabeth was really helpful.”

Love found she tended to get lost in the details. She had to learn not to over-explain, and to trust the audience.

She changed her approach from a realistic play targeted to an adult audience, to a children’s play in the style of magic realism. Beemer revised her ending.

“I surprised myself,” she said. “I tend to be more of an analytical writer, and so it was challenging, at first, to get into the mind-set of characters’ voices. I’d never done that before.”

The students all look forward to hearing their works read aloud. It’s an experience that Murphy, whose play was one selected by the ACT panel for presentation in Seattle, has already had.

“When I heard it, it put it all in perspective for me,” Murphy said. “I could see – aha, if I was to continue with this, I’d take this out, and clarify this.”

He may get his chance. Hyla will present eight of the plays, each of which will be reshaped by the whole class into collaborative ensemble work, in May.

The experience has changed the the way some of the students view theater-going.

“It’s kind of interesting because when you think of Shakespeare, you think – wow, it’s kind of easy for him: ‘Chi-ching. Play. Done,’” Murphy said. “But after going through this process, you realize how hard playwriting is, so it gives me respect for those really good playwrights.”

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Word Assn.

The March Word Series appears at 7:30 p.m. March 6 at Bainbridge Performing Arts.

Hyla Middle School eighth-graders Jackson Beall and John Murphy. premiere staged readings of their respective works: “The Salesman” and “The Protest Files.” Also featured are Bainbridge Island High School junior Allison Beemer’s “Once Upon a Time in the Middle of Somewhere” and BHS junior Elsie Love’s “The Adventures of Talay and Isra.”

Tickets are $5, available at the BPA box office.