Here at UMPI, students have done great things on campus. They do research, projects or other work related to their major. But sometimes students get to go outside their comfort zones. Recently, a group of UMPI students did just that. They wrote plays and discovered a new love of theater. Friday, March 18, and Saturday, March 19, was when people got to see the results of the students’ hard work and new skills. These were the nights of UMPI’s first playwriting festival.
For weeks, the writers learned about the playwriting process. They wrote their plays and got advice from Darci Faye, UMPI’s drama club president. Then they rewrote their plays several times. All writers got to cast UMPI student actors for their play. The last part was two rehearsals for each play. The festival had everything from comedy to drama to mystery plays.
Daniel Sanipass was one of the student playwrights. His play was “The Christians.” It was a comedy about a family celebrating “anti-Christmas.” Sanipass is a junior at UMPI majoring in math. He said that writing a play let him show off his creative side.
“I love comedy and I’ll do anything to make somebody laugh,” Sanipass said. “I’ve always had a creative side. So this was a good outlet for me.”
The playwriting festival was the first time any of the writers wrote a play. Sanipass enjoyed every part of the playwriting process.
“There is a point where you don’t know where you’re going. But you keep going anyway,” Sanipass said. “It’s amazing and terrifying at the same time.”
Dave Curran, another festival playwright, is not an UMPI student. He found out about the festival online. His play was “The Caper.” It was a mystery about four friends and an online bank heist gone wrong. For Curran, the best part of the process was not the writing.
“The best part for me was actually seeing the play come to life,” Curran said. “I’d never seen anything I’ve written performed before. But the actors did an awesome job with it.”
Curran enjoyed writing the play as well. He had written a movie script before, so he thought he’d try writing a play. The festival gave him a chance to write a great mystery.
“I’ve always loved murder mysteries. So I put a kind of spin on this play with a computer heist instead of a murder,” Curran said.
Faye said that she enjoyed helping the playwrights find out what they can do. She hopes that the festival gives them a new respect for playwriting.
“It would be really awesome if someone realized that maybe they have a knack for writing and they want to continue writing plays or keep developing the play that they’ve already written,” Faye said.
Some of the festival writers may write more plays in the future. Others might not. But all of them can say that they took a chance on something they had never done before. And they got to see the great things they could accomplish. That’s something they can remember no matter what they do with their careers and lives.
