Minor sets the stage for alumni success

It’s one thing to write something for a class and get a grade. It’s another to see your work performed or published.

Started in 2003 by David Sontag and currently led by Dana Coen, the communication department’s Writing for the Screen and Stage program emphasizes the dramatic writing skills needed for careers in both theater and film.

The program doesn’t just prepare students for professional success, it provides them with an opportunity to see their work produced at Carolina. In the introductory course, students write short plays and screenplays; Coen selects eight of those plays for the annual Writing for the Screen and Stage Long Story Shorts festival. This celebration of students’ one act plays is now in its seventh year.

The festival prompted the publication of Twenty-Five Short Plays: Selected Works from The University of North Carolina Long Story Shorts Festival, 2011-2015, edited by Coen and released in August by UNC Press. Coen plans to publish a new volume every five years. (Read a fall 2017 Carolina Arts & Sciences magazine Q&A with Coen about the new book.)

Ariel Butters, a 2012 graduate, can still remember the standing ovation after her short play was produced at Carolina. “I can’t tell you how it feels—the first time you see something that came from your brain come to life,” she said, smiling. “It was one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

For almost 15 years, scores of WSS program alumni have made their mark in New York and Los Angeles, in the entertainment industry and beyond.

It’s a point of pride for Coen.

“Many of our students are already experiencing a great deal of success in both New York and Los Angeles. But what’s most important to me is that they have something to say, and that they’re saying it to the world at large,” he said.

Laura Stoltz, another 2012 Carolina graduation, is the assistant to alumnus Peyton Reed, director of the Marvel film Ant-Man and its upcoming sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp. Stoltz, who is also associate producer on the latter, credits UNC-Chapel Hill and the minor for getting her where she is today.

“I would not have the sense of story that I do now” if it weren’t for the program, said Stoltz.

On the other side of the superhero world, Bronwen Clark, a 2014 WSS graduate who also double majored in comparative literature and political science, has made her mark on the CW television series The Flash. An internship led to her current job as a writers’ assistant; this year, she co-wrote an episode for the show’s third season.

The WSS program enjoys a close relationship with the Hollywood Internship Program; it’s “symbiotic,” according to the internship’s director, Paul Edwards. “A well-prepared writer, who is taught well by the WSS program, coming to Hollywood with a script in their hand that they can show people, is like a huge calling card.”