Being in the Room

Over the summer, Campbell spent a week in Atlanta with other college students from across the country, attending readings of their plays with professional actors, and working with a mentor selected for them. Campbell reflected upon their experience:

Being at the New South Young Playwrights Festival was amazing. I was there with 22 other playwrights who were in college, or who had just graduated college, from a wide variety of backgrounds, and who had all written beautiful plays. Our days lasted from 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM, and we were commissioned to write a 5-minute play that was performed by local actors in a festival on the last day.

We were all in groups of four or five, and we were each assigned a mentor, either a working playwright or a playwriting MFA student. Mine was [playwright] Crystal Skillman, and she really helped me push my writing to its limits. I still have all the notes and bits of advice that she gave me about writing plays, and I'm incredibly grateful for her continued support.

Each mentor led an MFA-style seminar on things like exposition, idea generation, structure, character, and revision. We even learned about writing musicals and TV pilots! There were also a bunch of guest speakers from various backgrounds in the playwriting business who talked to us about their journeys (including Emmanuel Wilson, co-Executive Director of the Dramatists Guild!), and it was great to see examples of just how many pathways one can take to succeed in the playwriting business.

As a cohort, we developed a strong bond, and I feel as though I've gained a group of lifelong friends that I can call on for critique, advice, and a good time.

Miriam Campbell '26

We also saw two shows: The Wash, a new play by Kelundra Smith (who gave a talk at the festival) about the Atlanta Washerwoman's Strike in 1881, and The Preacher's Wife, a musical at the Alliance Theatre, based on the movie of the same name. Seeing theatre is so important for playwrights, but it can be incredibly inaccessible for a lot of people, so as a FLoW [first-generation, low-income, or working class] student, I greatly appreciated the Horizon Theatre Company providing us the opportunity to see local theatre for free.

All the food we ate was donated from local businesses, and we went out to a couple of restaurants to eat as well. I tried soul food for the first time as well—best mac and cheese of my life.

We spent a lot of time during the first half reading 10-minute excerpts from everyone's plays and providing feedback. I ended up going last on day 4, which was nerve-wracking because the play that I submitted has difficult subject matter, and it depicts some unfortunate aspects of my own family's history, but people responded well to what I shared. I have so many new ideas of what to add and how to develop it, and hopefully I can start submitting a more polished version to competitions later down the line.

Writing my 5-minute play was a lot more stressful than I thought it was going to be, as you have to be incredibly precise with your dialogue and exposition. Conveying character, circumstances, and a complete story arc is a tall order for 5 minutes, but it was a welcome challenge. A lot of the time, working with limitations can cause artists to produce some of their best work, and I am proud of the play that I ended up writing. It was also cool to have professional actors reading my play. I couldn't stop smiling during the rehearsals! We got to talking about their journeys as actors as well, which I enjoyed.

Another thing that I struggled with a lot during the festival was impostor syndrome. It hit me pretty hard during the first few days, mainly because the vast majority of my peers were studying playwriting or creative writing. My Plan is primarily in acting, so being put in an environment with people who had more experience than me was incredibly daunting, but by the end that feeling had completely disappeared because of how welcoming and approachable all of my peers were.

I realised that I was already in the room, so I didn't need to feel like an outsider. I loved talking about plays and musicals with them during meals, reviewing what we had just learned in the seminars during breaks, and complaining about how uncomfortable the dorm beds were on the drive to the theatre every day. As a cohort, we developed a strong bond, and I feel as though I've gained a group of lifelong friends that I can call on for critique, advice, and a good time.

I think my favourite memory with them happened the night before the last day. We were all extremely sleep deprived and got excited about going to Waffle House for some reason. We saw that the nearest one was a 15-minute walk, so we went there only to find that it had closed down a couple months ago. In the end, we went back and talked and played some games in one of the dorms. Even though we did not succeed in our initial mission, it was the most fun I'd had in a long time!

Overall, it was an incredible experience, and I would recommend it to anyone. I feel so much more confident in myself as a writer, I made a ton of great connections, and I had a lot of fun. It's intense, but rewarding, and totally worth it!