The curtain goes up tonight on one of local theater's most charming and unique projects.

The Youth Foundation's Playwrights Project is teaching kids about deadlines, about producing under pressure and that fun really is the meaning of life.

In the Playwrights Project, theater looks like nothing you've seen.

Young authors write in two-person teams, usually one from each of the two major genders, and each is getting their paradigm pushed.

Boys are writing about being caring and nurturing. Girls are learning to throw rocks and blow stuff up.

They have to create at least two characters. Those characters cannot be human, and the action takes place in a world that exists beneath our feet — under the valley floor.

Each play is about 10 minutes long.

A shower and a faucet fall in love. A girl gives a boy flowers. A vampire is chasing a wolverine. The vampire is bright and sarcastic; the wolverine is a bit dim.

They have well-developed characters, full storylines with situations that their characters must handle, and there are some great one-liners.

Slime is flung, as it is in all great theater.

Most of the endings are happy, but not all.

And it's creativity that matters, says Emma Cunliffe, a veteran British actor who's launching the project.

“We wanted them to have complete creative freedom and not worry about anything else,” Cunliffe said. “We're celebrating imagination.”

They had to learn the basics of acting and stagecraft. They had to learn to develop characters. They had to learn to write dialogue instead of prose, Cunliffe said.

You can punctuate after you create. They had to learn to put facts in dialogue. You can't just write that the slime flew 20 feet, someone has to say that, said Madison Martinez, one of the young playwrights.

Strength of an idea

Cunliffe walked through Lee Jones's door at The Youth Foundation last November with an idea. The timing was perfect, says Susie Davis, director of The Youth Foundation.

The Youth Foundation's after school programs offers lots of wonderful stuff, but was conspicuously devoid of theater.

Cunliffe is a force of nature and in about two hours she and Jones had the program mapped out. A bunch of kids signed up and they were on their way, secure in the knowledge that Shakespeare started just like this.

As for The Youth Foundation, the goal is to equip kids with skills that will serve them well all their days, things like creativity, problem solving, overcoming conflict, learning to lead and direct others … all the stuff you learn when you're writing and directing theater productions.

The play's the thing

The Youth Foundation encourages this sort of thing, both in kids and the adults who work with them.

“If someone comes in with an idea and has qualifications, we give them a template,” Davis said. “We act as a matchmaker.”

Cunliffe filled out the template, talked to Lee for a couple hours, and launched the program.

She has all kinds of theater background. She was an actor and model in London before moving to the U.S., and landing in the valley with her husband, Avery.

She spent 13 years as a professional actor being directed by other people, so she knows what it's supposed to look like — and this is it.

Right now, the Playwrights Project is being run at June Creek Elementary School and Berry Creek Middle School, with plans to expand. This round started Jan. 5 and it runs eight weeks. They're staging their plays tonight

Some local high school thespians will bring to life characters that are something more than human.

“We had no problem getting ideas,“ Martinez said.

“It's getting them to stop that can be difficult,” Cunliffe said.

Staff Writer Randy Wyrick can be reached at 970-748-2935 or rwyrick@vaildaily.com.