For only $55, you can sponsor a New York City teenager for one week of participation in our unique educational theatre program... 

Or for as little as $15 you will help to ensure a future for New York's most cutting edge educational theatre program!

Keen Teens gives students the opportunity to work with professional artists in a professional setting.  Students participate in rehearsals for 12 weeks and then go through the real-world process of getting the plays ready for performance and presenting them at an Off-Broadway Theatre.  And to top it all off, there is NO CHARGE FOR ANY STUDENTS TO PARTICIPATE IN KEEN TEENS. 

Your tax-deductible contribution will go a long way towards ensuring that we finish off this season strongly. Our budget is as tight as we can make it and we will be producing the plays with extremely limited resources, but certain costs (theatre rental, rehearsal space, minimal fees for our professional artists) are impossible to do without, and we want to ensure that that all 33 students get the full experience of being involved with the exceptional plays the writers created exclusively for Keen Teens. We will be presenting the shows in an Off-Broadway production at the Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row from May 6-8th, and expect to continue our trend of selling out all five performances.

OUR SHOWS

VIRTUAL CONGRESS
Written by Mike Lew; Directed by David F. Chapman

THE FLIP SIDE
Written by Jenny Schwartz; Directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde

THE BORING-EST POEM IN THE WORLD
Written by Greg Kotis; Directed by John Clancy

OUR IMPACT

The impact of Keen Teens on students and drama teachers is tremendous, and will grow with each year of our program. The students who participate in our rehearsal process are the immediate beneficiaries. But students across the United States are already also benefiting. The Playscripts catalogue, which lists the plays along with a synopsis and production history, is mailed to 40,000 recipients. This gives students and administrators all over the world access to our plays for reading, acting class work and for production and participation in Theatre Festivals. Playscripts also makes a large portion of each script available through their online catalogue so teachers and actors have the opportunity to read some of it before purchasing. 

To date, there have been 121 licensed performances of our plays and 1,720 copies of our scripts have been purchased by teachers and students at high schools all across the globe, including the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland! That means that approximately 15,480 students are working on Keen Teens plays.

OUR STUDENTS

During our casting process, we are committed to bringing students from vastly different geographic, economic, and educational backgrounds together. They come from Suffolk County to Rockland County, from Jersey City to the Upper East Side to audition for our program. These are students who ordinarily would not have met each other nor worked together at this point in their lives. Some students have professional experience, and some have never been in a play before. We continue to see that this diversity defines the heart of the program. Teaching students that true theatre is about finding your own voice and learning how to listen to someone and respond to them truthfully and honestly continues to be our greatest goal each week.

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