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Q&A with Kendra Thomas
At Pioneer Drama, a lot of care and commitment goes into our scripts, from editing and proofreading to layout and print. But let's face it: none of it would happen without playwrights who provide the story and put words on a page, which in turn creates magic on your stage.
That's why we're introducing Playwright Profiles, a Q&A showcasing some of your favorite Pioneer playwrights.
This month, we're featuring Kendra Thomas, winner of Pioneer's 2014 A+ Playwriting Contest for Teachers for The Struggles, and author of the recently released Boxes. Kendra has already carved a niche for herself penning poignant one-act dramas that truthfully depict the modern teen experience. With this article, we're excited to announce the publication of Kendra's latest play, The March Hare's Tale. A departure from her usual subject matter, this newest release is a delightful one-act story with the beloved characters from Alice in Wonderland that highlights the strength of friendships and the power of perseverance.
Expect to see a lot more from Kendra! Besides being a full-time drama teacher at Brooks Collegiate Academy in San Antonio, Kendra's pounding away at the keyboard, challenging herself to write a play a month in 2018. Kendra's upcoming releases include Whispers, a drama about military kids who've lost parents to battle, and Hush, a story of the consequences of abuse and the challenges faced by those who want to help but just don't know how.
Pioneer Drama Project Editor Jeremy Johnson: Hi Kendra, we’re excited about all the titles you have coming out, and it’s been really fun for me to get familiar with your work. Tell us a little about yourself, your background and what you do — aside from playwriting, of course.
Playwright Kendra Thomas: I’m currently teaching theatre and am the instructional specialist for what’s called SLAM! classes at Brooks Collegiate Academy in San Antonio. And I absolutely love it. I get to direct a lot of theatre, I get to work with a lot of kids, who I get a lot of encouragement from. They know I write plays based on them, and they’ve read everything I’ve written. And I have a creative writing class, so they share with me what they’re writing and I share with them — that way I get a lot of feedback from them. I absolutely love it.
JJ: What got you into playwriting? Where were you in your life in general when you started?
KT: I wanted to be a writer since I was about 13 years old. I can actually remember very clearly the day I decided I wanted to be a writer. And so I was writing plays, I was writing silly little novels like the ones you write in spiral notebooks when you’re 13 years old — stuff like that. And I just wrote all the time, every day, any idea that would pop into my head. And as I grew older, and I got into high school and college, I decided I was going to study theater. After I stumbled onto theater I realized I loved the art form, I loved being on stage, I loved directing, I loved being backstage — I loved everything about it.
And seeing all those aspects, I really threw myself into writing a play my junior year of college, a full-length play. ...My senior year of college it got a full production. We took it to the American College Theater Festival, and it was a big deal — it won awards, it was well received. And I was just super-excited about that. And then, I thought at that point “This writing thing, I really feel confident about it.”
Between the time I graduated and the time I wrote The Struggles, I spent a lot of time writing novels. I wasn’t really playwriting then... I focused on writing and promoting my books, which was absolutely exhausting. And while I was on book tour, I was telling my story of being an dyslexic writer and having ADHD and what that was like growing up. And I’d have kids come up to me and say “Nobody has ever said this to me before. Nobody’s ever talked about my struggles. Nobody has ever told me I can overcome this, that I can still be a wonderful person.”
So, the light bulb just kind of went off and I thought “I need to turn this into a play, a children’s play, something they can identify with.” I knew it could be so much more impactful than just me getting up and talking to people. I wrote The Struggles in about a week. To this day it’s the fastest thing that I’ve ever written. I just sat down, and it all poured out.
And so I took it to my theatre kids... I didn’t tell them that I wrote it, I just gave it to them, and we sat down and read it and they absolutely loved it and begged me, “Can we do this? We want this to be our competition piece.” (We) went to competition and performed — it cleaned up! The kids did a wonderful job. They won every single top award they could win. It was just really well received. And so I came back from that thinking I had to get it published. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Pioneer Drama published The Struggles in 2014 as the winner of our A+ Playwriting Contest for Teachers.)
And then I didn’t write another play for... two years? Three years? I took a little break. I switched jobs and became a principal and... it wasn’t a great fit for my personality. ...So I decided about middle of my second year as principal I wasn’t going to do that anymore. And then I wrote Boxes and when — I can’t point exactly to the timeframe, but during that spring I know I was exchanging emails (with Pioneer) and I just thought “This is what you’re supposed to be doing. You’re supposed to be playing with kids, putting on plays, doing theatre, and writing scripts.” I’d spent the last 10 years of my life trying to figure out what I actually want to do. Then I had a sudden epiphany: “This is what I want to do. This is who I am.”
JJ: You seem really tapped into the modern teen experience, with its litany of trials and tribulations. Do you find being an educator has helped you relate better to young people?
KT: Absolutely. I don’t think you can write teenagers as characters unless you’re living their day-to-day with them. I spend eight hours a day with kids and I hear what they talk about, I hear what they’re concerned about, and what their interests are. And I’ve been afforded a lot of opportunities to ask them very directly “Hey, what are you feeling? Where are your anxieties coming from? Where are your encouragements coming from?” And I think that has given me more insight. That being said, I’m careful because I’m also not a teenager. And there are answers that they give that surprise me. Times are very different now than from my childhood, and I want to respect that in my writing. And so I listen to them a lot. If we read something I’ve written and they tell me “I don’t like this,” or “I don’t think this is realistic,” or “This feels too one-dimensional,” I listen to them.
JJ: Your plays tend to have a therapeutic, heavy social awareness component to them. An exception is the new release, The March Hare’s Tale, an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Did you purposely seek to write something more, well, fun?
KT: Yes, I needed a break! I had a group of sixth-grade theater students working on another play, and we were a little bit into reading and rehearsing when I realized what a drag it was on them. It wasn’t really a good fit for that particular group of students. I’d picked the wrong play. We had cast the play, we were a week into rehearsal — the whole nine yards. And it was like “Okay, do we back out?” And so I put the ball in their court and gave them a very rough draft of The March Hare’s Tale, which I had already thought would be perfect. We read through it and I just asked them... and every single one of them said, “We don’t care if we have to go through auditions again, and we don’t care if we have to start over, we want to do March Hare.” Decision made. And, really, I just wanted to write a script that a bunch of sixth-graders would love. It’s quirky and fun and the parents really like it. And it’s not totally fluffy — there’s still a good story in there! Hey, women’s rights here!
JJ: What do you think you’re doing in your writing that you see as bringing value to arts education?
KT: When I’m writing plays, I’m trying to keep in my head, “How do you do a show with no budget?” You CAN do a show with no budget. I’ve done it. And so I try to keep that in mind. I want props to be easy to find, to be things that parents can donate or directors can go out and get easily, or plays that can be done with six chairs and maybe a table, so they don’t have to worry about budget. They can make it as big and broad and beautiful as they want, but they can also do it with almost nothing.
Those things are important to small schools, especially. Arts education is so important in all schools, but small schools often don’t have the budget for it. So it’s the mom who has volunteered to do this, and she needs all the help she can get. Or it’s the coach, it’s the dad who’s doing soccer, but got roped into doing theatre, too. These people are absolutely fundamental to keeping arts in school and keeping arts alive. I want to write plays that can be done from a logistical standpoint, something they can handle, something they can do. You want to walk up to those parents who volunteer and say, “You can do this, you’ll be okay.”
JJ: What are some of the greatest challenges you face as a playwright?
KT: Time is huge. But also beyond time... I think a lot of people who are in the arts fight with this notion of not being good enough, of that imposture syndrome — “I’m really not good at this and soon enough they’re going to find that out.” I wrote The Struggles for the kids, but I also wrote it for me. It is a constant reminder that, “Hey, you know what? You are good enough.” So I do fight with that. And I fight with time. I have to really make sure I’m setting aside time to write — even if it’s 10 or 15 minutes. Even if it’s three lines, you’ve done something, you’ve accomplished something. Even if you can’t get motivated to do anything else because it was a hard day at work, you’ve got 20 other things — maybe it’s tech week — just celebrate that you sat down for 15 minutes and wrote three lines. Celebrate that. And then tomorrow sit down and write three lines again if that’s what it takes to get you going. But you’ve got to write every day. And you’ve just got to find the strength in you to honor yourself and honor your talent.
JJ: Your plays are produced before they’re published. So, what kind of feedback have you heard, not just from students and directors, but audiences as well?
KT: It’s been different for every play. I’ve heard from parents either, “Wow, this is my child and now I see what my child is going through and it gives me hope for my child,” or I’ve also heard the other end of it: “This isn’t my child, but it’s my friend’s child, or it’s my child’s friend.”
For Whispers (a show about military kids who’ve lost parents to battle) ...The way they do it at (the North Carolina Theatre Conference) competition is they have these little stars you can buy for a dollar and stick on other show posters, to give encouragement and positive feedback, that kind of thing — it keeps the festival festive. And when we did Whispers there was a group of kids there from Fort Bragg. We knew they were going to be there, and we were really concerned about it, so we actually even put a warning in the program. Anyhow, after the show I went outside to where all the posters were hanging, and one of the Fort Bragg kids had made a star and stuck it on our poster, and it just said, “Thank you for telling our stories.” And that to this day — I get choked up just thinking about it. It was a great moment. For us there was no other recognition we needed. That was enough.
I never get tired of hearing that a play I have written — I go back to The Struggles, because that’s the one that’s been out the longest — has impacted someone, or has impacted lives. Hearing how it’s inspired and created something bigger than it was — you just get really excited. And as far as feedback, nobody gets tired of hearing good things.
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