Class

Page and the Stage for Ages 12 to 14

Welcome back to Summer Youth at Open Book! Join us for a week of writing and all day creativity!

-Session 1: Express Yourself! WORD! for Ages 12 to 14 with Rachel Guvenc
Are you passionate about expressing yourself? Are you curious about writing poetry? In this class you will encounter poetry, Spoken Word, music, visual art and more to inspire your writing. You will write poetry about your memories, dreams, observations, and opinions. We will use our senses to create vivid descriptions of our experiences and ideas. We will explore poetry by Margaret Noodin, Langston Hughes, Gloria Muñoz and others. Then you will get the chance to write your own poems. As a group, we will participate in games and fun activities that will get the creative juices flowing. By the end of the week, you will have a collection of poems you can choose to read aloud for our final celebration! Express your inner thoughts, memories, and emotions through poetry!

-Lunch & Enrichment: We'll break for lunch with more activities that will inspire us to express ourselves while having fun! We may explore Gold Medal Park to seek creativity outside the classroom! Please bring a packed lunch.

-Sesson 2: Get Into Character: Acting 101 for Ages 12 to 14 with John Schaidler
Drawing on fundamental techniques of Method Acting, students learn to build great characters piece by piece. Each session focuses on one of Stanislavski’s key principles, guiding students to create authentic heroes from “the inside out.” Step into your protagonist’s shoes; walk away with a proven system for creating memorable characters. Students will learn to create realistic and compelling characters by exploring their interior lives through Konstantin Stanislavski’s groundbreaking approach to acting. Over four engaging sessions, participants will develop characters “from the inside out,” building their motivations, emotions, and actions layer by layer to bring to life on the page.

Explore the Magic If, a powerful tool for putting students in their characters’ shoes. We’ll also learn to identify scene-level objectives and understand how these small, specific goals work toward achieving a character’s super-objective—the driving force behind their story.

By the end of the course, students will walk away a toolkit for building characters that feel real, dynamic, and emotionally resonant. Characters who grow and evolve from the beginning to the end of the story.

Whether for novels and stories, film, or creative nonfiction, this course equips young storytellers with a proven system for bringing memorable characters to life.

Aspiring writers, grab your notebooks and pens, and let’s write at the Loft!