As a part of the Academy’s new arts initiative to increase performing arts in our school, a small group of students got the chance to participate in a play-writing seminar. The workshop was sponsored by the Coterie Theatre and led by on of their writing mentors and facilitators, Vi Tran. Aside from his play-writing skills, Tran is an aspiring musician and talented actor.

I was lucky enough to be one of the students who got to participate in this seminar. We worked on everything from creating characters to writing scenes, and even did some improvisational acting in our spare time. We used something called a “character resume” to develop characters from our own imagination. We then created monologues with the two characters describing each other. We used what we already knew to created a scene using those two characters. We also learned about the setting that you would need for a play. We described how we would set up the stage of a theatre if we were to put on our play.

“One of my favorite parts was when we took a picture and had to create a dialogue between the characters in the picture based off of what was happening in the picture. It was great because we got to use our imagination while still working on our play-writing,” said freshman Jonathan Edelman.

Tran was extremely impressed with the work of the Academy students. He has led quite a few of these workshops and has lots of experience. He was able to pass down his knowledge to the students to help them improving their writing skills. According to Tran, one of the best things about the students was our interest in the subject and how open we were to doing the activities. Some other students are nervous to put themselves out there, but we opened up and it showed in our writing.

“The collective group talent was impressive and person for person, it’s been one of the more productive sessions I’ve ever led,” said Tran.

This is another example of how the Academy has been exploring different types of education. We got the chance to do something that most of us had never done before. For relative novices, I think that we all did an amazing job and produced good quality work.



“It was a wonderful opportunity to go beyond traditional academics and follow personal interests. I was extraordinarily impressed with both the caliber of the speaker and the student’s work,” said Upper School Principal Marion Gould.