Kids get to see their plays performed by pros

Three plays written by young Iowans will be performed by professional actors on the Des Moines Civic Center stage next week (Tuesday) for a group of several thousand students — including the three budding playwrights. Christopher Taykalo, the Civic Center’s education manager, says a Chicago-based theatre troupe called Child’s Play, will be putting on the students’ work. Taykalo says students will be coming to the performance from all over Iowa. He says it’s important to foster a child’s creativity and give them an opportunity to improve their writing skills. The program is called Writing our World, or WOW, and Taykalo says it brings to life vibrant works exploring children’s lives, hopes and dreams in a musical, multi-cultural journey featuring stories, poems, and songs from villages and towns around the globe. As part of the show, he says students in kindergarten through 7th grade were taught creative writing exercises by their instructors and used what they learned to write original stories. The selected stories are: “The Dragon Book,” written by Denton Roberts, Pleasant Hill Elementary (grade one), “My Point of View,” written by Em Eklofe, Knoxville Middle School (grade seven), and “Piper and Her Problem,” written by Meridith Graham, Atlantic Middle School (grade six). They’ll be performed in two shows Tuesday at 9:45 A.M. and at 12:15 P.M.