This year’s Pegasus Young Playwrights Festival offers a window into the thoughts of Chicago teenagers
Each new year, the Pegasus Theatre’s Young Playwrights Festival provides some insight into the feelings, worries and ideas of talented dramatic writers from the city’s high schools. This has been true for decades but it’s surely fair to say that the 2021 edition is especially revealing. We’re in the middle of a lousy time to be a teenager. You’re mostly likely stuck at home in a bedroom or basement and surely unable to feel secure in the continuance of American health, progress and democracy.
Distill this year’s impressive three winners — ”A Lady’s Facade,” penned by Aisha Ziad of the University of Chicago’s Lab School; “Containment” by Lincoln Gaw of Lane Tech College Prep; and “These Glass Lives” by Jake Florell of Kenwood Academy — and you get a window into what’s on the minds of teenagers.
Layoffs. The rise of big tech. Governmental heavy-handedness and incompetence. The draconian consequences of the virus. Jeff Bezos. The relationship of Black citizens and the police. Economic insecurity.
All three of these writers, though, have maintained their sense of humor and forward-looking spirit.
“Who needs democracy when you can have two-day shipping for free?,” asks a character in Gaw’s dystopian drama, a striking look at how big retail, and its avatars, are eclipsing elected entities. This pandemic has, of course, re-emphasized the hitherto invisible borders between the states, one of which figures prominently in Gaw’s work. And while young writers often have turned to secret agent-like figures to create tension, you would not have previously expected their employing agency to be the Centers for Disease Control nor their monikers Unnamed CDC Operative 2. This year, though, that makes sense.
In Ziad’s lively play, the setup involves a curator at a museum who finds herself being told that she is being laid off, her employer unable to support her further. That leads the character on a kind of detective mission to get her job back, one that takes her into the world of Leonardo Da Vinci and his most famous subject, probing a relationship even more complicated than you might have thought.
As you’d expect, this year’s festival is an online experience created in peoples’ homes, although Pegasus still has managed to give all three of its winning writers full digital productions in collaboration with a professional director (Reshmi Hazra Rustebakke, Alex Levy and artistic director ILesa Duncan are on the team) and cast (Josh Bernaski, John Drea, Gabriel Fries, Nastacia Guimont, James Lewis, Victor Musoni and Vinithra Raj make up the ensemble). This was no easy challenge, given the lack of big production budgets and the need to cut individually filmed segments into scenes with several characters.
It’s a very worthwhile 90 minutes, though, and one that will make you yet-more aware of the impact of all that currently transpires on young people.
Florell’s play, a sophisticated piece of writing with rich symbolism and characters drawn with empathy, begins with the arrival of a kid in trouble in someone else’s apartment. Two men of different generations and circumstances then try and work out a solution to their shared dilemma, even as a police officer lurks. Florell catches both vulnerability and the value of mentorship and listening to experience.
In his taped author’s introduction, Florell explains the thinking behind his title: “We all are fragile people,” he says. “I was just hoping to touch everybody.”
Pegasus Young Playwrights Festival streams through Jan. 31; tickets ($12-$20) at Pegasustheatrechicago.org
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
