KIDSTAGE Originals Writing Team – Issaquah

• Writer’s applications due: Wednesday, September 22, 2021
• Writer’s Interviews: Friday, October 8 and Wednesday, October 13, 2021
• October-December 2021: Writers meet two-three times a week.
• January 2022: Actor Auditions.
• January-February 2022: Writers meet three-four times a week.
• March 2022: Writers meet five-six times a week, attending actor and writer rehearsals.
• End of March 2022: performances of final show.

View the rehearsal Calendar

Village Theatre’s generous tuition assistance program ensures that everyone can participate regardless of financial circumstances. We believe that experiential learning in theatre arts is a powerful tool for building essential life and career skills including critical thinking, concentration, collaboration, discipline, communication, and creativity.

Tuition for the 2021–2022 KIDSTAGE Originals writing program is $750. Financial assistance is available.

KIDSTAGE Originals is an original musical project created by emerging theatre artists. Students generate their own original material under the mentorship and guidance of a professional writing, composing, and directing team.

Once the writing team has a completed script, student actors are added to the process and the show is shared with an audience for feedback regarding their script and story. This process is designed to teach students about process of creating a show from script to stage, and provide students the life skills of collaboration, compromise, communication of ideas, and receiving critical responses to creative endeavors, among many others.

KIDSTAGE Originals productions are written by, for, and about teens, and can address some of the most important issues to teens today. Past KIDSTAGE Originals shows include: Last Exit, In Your Eyes, Save As…, Hot Mess, Playing Fair, This is What They Tell Me, Sincerely Yours, Out of Bounds, and All That Glitters – A Rock Legend.

Isaiah Hsu is ecstatic to be apart of the writing team at KIDSTAGE. He has a vast range of songs he loves, but his most favorite at the time is “Trouble” by Omar Apollo. He is excited to see where his writing takes him. Special thanks to K&P

Aresa Berry is very excited to be a writer in the KIDSTAGE Originals program. Her past KIDSTAGE productions include Urinetown (Stage Management Assistant) and A Christmas Story (Stage Crew). She would like to thank her friends, family, and writing mentors Tony and Rico for supporting her.

Colin Bixler is excited to be attending KIDSTAGE Originals in-person this year! His most previous work was KIDSTAGE Originals’s Not So Grim done virtually as part of the KIDSTAGE Originals New Works Festival last year, and he would like to thank his family and the front line workers for making all of this possible!

Sidh Shroff is 15 years old. He is also a student composer, having composed multiple pieces for his high school orchestra and radio station. When not composing or acting at Youth Theatre Northwest, you can find Sidh playing tennis, practicing multiple instruments, or even going live on 88.9 the Bridge.

Tony Curry (Writing Mentor) is now in his eight year as the Play Writing mentor for the KIDSTAGE Originals program. As a writer, he has more than 25 plays and screenplays to his credit. Seattle has seen the premieres of several of his plays including Café Ooh Longue, BlackJack, Unidentified Flying Object, Red, White & Turning Blue, Rumpelstiltskin and That Millennium Thing. He was commissioned by the Seattle Opera to help create a children’s adaptation of Mozart’s The Magic Flute for both a Northwest tour and recording. He was a recipient of the Artist Trust Fellowship for Playwrights. His screenplay, The Sand Sea, is in now pre-production and scheduled for filming in England and Morocco in Spring of 2022. But most of all, he loves working with these incredible young people as they create a new musical.

Rico Lastrapes (Music Mentor) is an actor, composer, choreographer, teaching artist, and a 2021-2022 Tacoma Artists Initiative Program funding recipient. He began to write music after performing in orchestra pits for multiple productions, including Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Parade, while attending Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. As his love for musical storytelling grew, he began to pursue theatre and dance, receiving his BFA in Acting from The University of Central Florida. He has performed in several regional productions in Washington and Florida (West Side Story, Newsies, In the Heights, RENT, Godspell). He has created a 15 Minute Story for The 5th Avenue Theatre and founded Break the Table, an online streaming channel for BIPOC creatives