The middle school has a new playwright in seventh grader Hailee Shrimplin, whose play about rival kingdoms and young heroes will show at Theatre Lawrence.
Shrimplin’s play is a part of Theatre Lawrence’s Suitcase Stories program, where local playwrights and actors go to schools and help students write original plays. The free performance of her show is scheduled for 10 a.m. Feb. 21.
“Writing a play sounded really, really fun,” Shrimplin said. “And it was. It’s a lot of work, but it’s really, really fun getting to brainstorm funny ideas.”
Shrimplin joined the Suitcase Stories club after hearing about it on the school intercom. The Eudora Schools Foundation sponsored the club.
She was the only student who stuck with it for all four sessions. For the first after-school session, the Theatre Lawrence crew brought a suitcase full of various items to help students brainstorm play ideas.
“What they had was a huge fake fork and spoon,” Shrimplin said. “So, like, I thought of food because, yeah, why not?”
Shrimplin’s 10-minute play is about three kingdoms. Two of the kingdoms, Spaghetti and Fettuccine, are at war. Both kingdoms are independently working with the Salami kingdom to try to get an advantage, but the Salami kingdom is deceiving both. The children of the different kingdoms have to work together to stop the war.
“It was a good amount of time writing and brainstorming, especially writing,” Shrimplin said. “My hand hurt after it.”
Shrimplin did all the work for her play at the Suitcase Stories sessions after school, and drama and math teacher Marla Johnson, who advises the club, said the Theatre Lawrence crew was a big help.
“They were really good about bringing, you know, kind of eliciting those ideas from the students and like, ‘Oh, you know, what about this?’” Johnson said. “It was a really good experience with at least having a real playwright come and talk to us and help us to understand what the plays might look like and, you know, kind of how to structure it.”
Shrimplin spent a lot of time working on her characters, and she decided the children of the kingdoms should save the day.
“I read a bunch of stuff where the adults are the heroes, or the teenagers,” Shrimplin said. “Let’s make these children who haven’t fully grown yet the heroes.”
Some of the characters are humans, and some are bunnies, Shrimplin said.
“While thinking about it, humans and animals, I thought of ‘Alice in Wonderland,’” Shrimplin said. “‘Alice in Wonderland’ was a huge inspiration with Alice being a human, the queen of hearts, the bunny who can’t get his time straight.”
Shrimplin wrote her play as a narrative, and members of Theatre Lawrence turned it into a script. Adult actors chosen by Theatre Lawrence will perform Shrimplin’s play, along with the plays from other students who participated in the program at different schools. Shrimplin said she’s excited to see on show day which actors were picked.
“A lot of my family is going to see it. My mom’s friends are going to see it,” Shrimplin said. “My mom’s friends are helping me get ready. One’s doing my hair, one’s doing my makeup.”
Johnson said she will be there, too. She said it has been wonderful to see Shrimplin grow throughout this process.
“It’s so nice to see kids, you know, spread their wings,” Johnson said. “And it’s a different side of students that you see when they’re writing plays as opposed to when they’re acting in plays, because you get to see a lot more personality with them. So it’s been just a really good growth process.”
Emily Shrimplin said she is proud of her daughter and glad she found something that she loves.
“Her dad and I are both into theater separately, and then we met doing community theater,” Emily Shrimplin said. “We were hoping that at least one of our kids would be into theater, so we’re pretty excited.”
This was the middle school’s first year of Suitcase Stories, and Johnson said she’s more than willing to continue offering it. She said clubs like this build creativity.
“Even though we have drama classes here, it gives even more students opportunities to do things,” Johnson said. “This gives kind of more of a creative outlet that, you know, we can’t always incorporate into core classes.”
Education Director Emily Giles at Theatre Lawrence said the theater offers this program because kids are creative geniuses.
“This is, you know, one way that we can give them a voice, so that their thoughts and their ideas can be shared,” Giles said.
She said she is most excited to see the kids’ eyes light up when they see their plays come to life on Feb. 21.
As for Hailee Shrimplin, she plans to stay involved with theater. She especially likes musicals and has a playlist of hundreds of songs from shows like “Hamilton,” “Wicked” and “Chicago.”
“I really want to be an actress for, like, movies and be in plays, because I’ve always wanted to be in a show, whether it’s a cooking show, drama show, reality TV. Reality TV is fun,” she said.
Reach Bella Waters at [email protected].
