Today, Catherine and I went to the Pen American Center offices to help set up  for a playwriting workshop. We were meant to do small odd intern-like jobs to keep the seminar going. (Such as setting up chairs, being in charge of the sign in sheet, setting up a breakfast corner etc.) We were told that a very small group of students were to show up to listen to a famous play write speak and have a crash course in play writing. Stacy ( a wonderful woman I have mentioned several times when posting and a very nice woman named Lynn told us that this workshop does not teach fundamentals of writing but inspires young people to write. I say this is a start to a youth writing revolution. The workshop, in my eyes, was created to not only give a taste of a different style of writing but to discuss topics that are intertwined within a writer’s mind when creating a piece. So you not only get to mix and mingle with interesting people that share a common bond but you can explore who you are as a writer. Catherine and I did all of our jobs and were expecting just to maybe get to eavesdrop on the conversation but we were surprised to find out we got to be a part of the seminar as well. Stacy gave us a notebook and basically said write it down. The first half of the almost 6 hour workshop (some of the coolest 6 hours of my short life!) was with a play writer and actor John Buffalo Mailer. That man is so nice and AMAZING at what he does. A little background on Mr. John Mailer is that he is the youngest son of American Novelist Norman Mailer and Norris Church ( a formal model, painter and writer). he has written numerous plays as well as screen plays and has a strong acting career. The workshop consisted of 6 or 7 people around a table just talking. We talked about everything someone thinks about theatre. It was so intimate and I wasn’t spoken to as a child just here to help, I was talked to as a young adult with ideas and contributions that don’t have to be thought of from a little kid’s perspective. John talked about how he wrote a novela and his first play focusing on a Columbine type situation. Mailer started his own theatre company and helped discover “In The Heights”. We also talked about how plays were written for certain audiences. Mailer also discussed how plays are almost like children and you grow up with them. It may be like a beauty pageant when showing your baby to the world. We also talked about a writer’s process. On how things can go up and down in difficulty, especially when trying to ask tough questions while being entertaining. The other half consisted of reading different excerpts from plays and discussing our thinking as the reader or what we think the writer was thinking. We read some Gertrude Stien and a bit of Suzan-Lori Parks. Not only did we discuss writing style but how race played a role in the piece. But what I think is one of the most important things I learned in this visit was about universal themes and how every writer uses them. We practiced this and I took an Alice in Wonderland theme.

Here is my writing from that day:

Wonderlands? Yes, wonderlands. And you thought there could be just one? One wonderland? A onederland. Wonder doesn’t have to mean amazing or fabulous in opinion, it just has to cause awe. My wonderland resides in a pen. A pen that creates worlds, uncanny to another. This pen holds mystery, suspense, happiness, rage or any type of things that come to the brain. With a pen and paper in posession, I’m allowed to create my own world. You could say that I live in a noebook. Lonely yet completely preoccupied in my own spiral paged world. I don’t know how I get to this world world of ink. It must be that I fall into some trap door hidden beneath the the words I am writing now. See this world dowsed with smeared blue ball point pen remains let’s me live somewhere else. Be someone different. Explore myself while wondering who I truly am. In this wonderland, I can be the main attraction against the gray and white lines. The splash of color or intrest in the book laid to rest on the black wooden table. I dance behind punction and ake shelter under capital Ts. I hide here, the one place I can let go and scream without making a sound, just using multiple exclamation points. I live here, I work here, I love here. This wonderland allows me to a perferrated facade. My second life, a starter wonderland.

Overall this was a great visit!

This was my second visit at PEN and it was both fun and educational. This time my group and I went to the PEN American Center offices to be student helpers for a writing activity that PEN was hosting. This particular event pertained to imprisoned writers and how teens can help make a writer’s life less of a struggle. My group and I came half an hour early to help set up table and supplies for the small workshop. We did small jobs like putting pens on a table, standing up greeting cards so that the design would show and placing photos of imprisoned writers on the surrounding walls. Before the workshop started Stacy Leigh (I have mentioned her in a past post) told us a bit about the imprisoned writer and what the letters that would be written in the workshop would do for them. As I said before an imprisoned writer is one who is in jail, a guest to the state and one who is trapped by their own words. These imprisoned writers wrote something that evoked something, usually for the positive. These writers are people who make change through their words, big or small. Stacy told us of a foreign  writer who wrote a poem for Valentine’s Day and was published. The poem had a hidden message that said a general was sick with power. But this is just one example of writing that caused a stir. Then Stacy talked to us about what we could do to help these writers. As young adults we can’t just fly half way across the world to talk to these international prisoners about their writing. But as teens we can write letters in support of these writers. They don’t have to be extensive, they just have to say I know your alive, I am acknowledging how great you are and i want to know how you are. Just to hear someone say they care is all they want because after you have been told nobody remembers you or cares about you, this is salvation in writing. This PEN event was specifically for 5th through 8th graders. Kids from the Bank Street School came to the offices to write cards and discuss the same topics I have just discussed above. My group and I helped the students write cards and got to participate in inscribing ourselves in PEN’s democracy wall. Democracy walls were huge in the 60’s and 70’s. All you need is a passionate subject where whoever wants to can write something that relates to the topic at hand and depicts a piece of themselves. The topic we wrote about was what does freedom of expression mean to us. I wrote a short poem (5 lines at most) that showed what I thought freedom of expression is. (If I can find the photo I will publish it). It felt great to get my words out there and it felt great that I got to help a writer stay sane. Over all, this was a great visit.

I had my first group visit with the PEN Organization. The PEN organization is a large community coming together to protect free speech and imprisoned writers.  Actually, PEN kind of came to us. We had a meeting with Stacy Leigh who is the director of the Readers and Writers.It was an introductory visit to get us started on our journey with PEN. Josh, Catherine, Nathaniel and I had an hour long conversation with Ms. Leigh discussing topics from imprisoned writers to what PEN does. I think the main topic through our conversation was what PEN does and what we could do as students to help our community. The organization is a community of writers founded in 1921 in London after a large dinner party between German and English writers that found a commonality, they wanted to save their literary voice. Two enemies during the World War I had the ability to act civilly toward one another. After our small history lesson, we learned about what is happening today within the PEN organization. Now, the New York City PEN Center is the largest center in the world and one of the most active. Ms. Leigh spoke to us about the “Power of the Pen”. This statement basically says that writing has significant power in the world. Whether you are writing or reading literature, the “pen” evokes something. It evokes change, freedom of expression and freedom of speech. We also discussed the imprisoned writer. An imprisoned writer is someone who is in jail, a guest to the state, chosen to be in isolation because of an outside threat, or a person who is surrounded by police or military because of what they wrote. But I think the strongest form of imprisonment is restraining or keeping their words confined. The writing was probably controversial or evoked someone or something. Being imprisoned must be torture, especially if you are just exercising your rights, but imprisonment makes controversy which involves publicity. And publicity informs the public of the wrongs within the writing world.  This visit was extremely educational and made all of us more socially aware. I can’t wait for our next visit!