Burning Coal seeks submissions for its annual festival featuring one-act plays by tweens, teens

For the tweens and teens out there who have stories to tell, Raleigh-based Burning Coal Theatre Company has an opportunity.

Burning Coal's annual Kidswrite festival is seeking new one-act plays written by students in sixth grade to 12th grade from Wake and surrounding counties in North Carolina.

Started in 2004, Kidswrite provides an opportunity for young writers to see a project from conception to final product. Burning Coal will produce a number of the scripts that are submitted at a festival of new plays in May.

"One of the things that young people don't get enough opportunities to do is to see something fully through - from a thought in their minds to a fully executed final product," said Jerry Davis, Burning Coal's artistic director. "This is one way they can do it. They can imagine something in their minds and watch it developed into a full production."

Over the years, Davis said that he's been amazed by the characters and worlds that the tweens and teens create - totally different than the worlds they may be immersing themselves in with popular shows on TV or blockbuster movies.

"The type of material that they create is very diverse and very much not rooted in linear storytelling in the way that some of our more commercial things are," Davis said.

In other words, they are definitely thinking outside the box.

The deadline for submissions is March 1. Writers will be notified in mid-April. The festival is scheduled for May 25 and May 26.

Also in May, Burning Coal has another event that might appeal to families with older kids. The company will do a series of plays at Oakwood Cemetery in downtown Raleigh that focuses on the lives of some of the people who are buried there. It's May 18 to May 20.

"There are some pretty remarkable stories over there," Davis tells me.