North Central students put their lives on stage

Last year every student at North Central High School was asked to pen their experiences of grief, love, loss, death and laughter.

They were told to write without limitations, to write an essay about significant moments in their lives.

The topics varied, from experiencing the divorce of their parents, to getting up the nerve to ask someone on a date.

One girl wrote of her mother’s suicide attempt, and another student wrote about a first kiss.

A committee of NC students and staff selected 45 of the 1,200 student essays for the production of “My World,” a series of monologues and short scenes based on the student writing.

The play, which begins today and continues through Saturday, and again Nov. 16-18, chronicles the lives of teens in their own words.

“A lot of people see teenagers as shallow, and adults don’t really sit down and talk to them,” said student Marty Shier, 18.

Shier, the lighting designer for the production, also contributed an essay about the death of his two sisters in a fire when he was 4.

“I think this shows that important things do happen to teenagers; we are complex,” Shier said.

Teens are having abortions, falling in love and witnessing death.

Other skits in this year’s production include a teen whose mother was arrested for manufacturing methamphetamine, and the excitement felt by a student competing in state finals with the basketball team.

“I know that some of it will be shocking, but I think it’s a good thing,” said Britney Achziger, 18. Achziger is acting in the play and wrote an essay. But like many of her peers, she wants her piece to remain anonymous.

Students like Achziger said they were amazed at the honesty of their friends and schoolmates.

“We have a lot of funny people, and we have very strong people that have had very difficult experiences,” said Jace Hovda, 17.

“It’s an honor to be able to do this, to act out what everyone wrote,” added freshman Skyler Hensz, 14.

“My World” was created in 1991 and is produced every four years or so at NC.

Longtime drama teacher Tom Armitage said students became frustrated about the content of high school literature and wanted a way to express what life is really like for America’s teens.

“They said it’s written by people who think they know what high school is like, but they don’t have any idea,” Armitage said.

So the drama students asked all the students in the school to write about a significant moment in their lives, and they agreed to produce it as a play.

The essays were grouped into categories so that not all of the essays selected would be about crushes or friends.

“When we first did it there were 30 categories,” Armitage said.

But in 15 years, the times have changed. There is the Internet and MySpace, iPods and cell phones, among other things. This year, they ended up with 75 categories.

But the common thread that remained was the value of relationships in the teens’ lives. Students still wrote about their parents, their partners and their friends.

“I think essentially they don’t change. They all want to be loved. They all want to be accepted,” Armitage said. “It’s all the junk in the world that changes.”