For the past 12 years, I have been devising and refining a mechanism for making our plays as structurally sound and as realistic as possible for the middle and high school audience. The issues we explore—drug and alcohol abuse, racism and sexual intolerance, teen pregnancy, violence, and now teen suicide—are difficult; few people feel comfortable talking about root causes (otherwise known as “who’s to blame”) and fewer still are willing to talk about their own experiences.

In 1998, when I was asked to write the scenes for a musical called “The Think it Thru Revue,” I knew that as a 29-year-old male I was not equipped with the depth of insight needed to write a truly realistic play about teen sex. The pressures of the kids I was working with were in many ways the same—peer pressure is peer pressure through the ages, for the most part—yet I knew that burgeoning technologies and more permissiveness and opportunity were also making the pressures greater than what I had experienced.

At the time, Arizona, where I was living and working, led the nation in teen pregnancy, so the stakes were high. The project was well funded and plenty of stakeholders were waiting to see what we were going to do.

The first thing I did—and this has become an essential part of our process—was to talk to the young actors who would be in the Company we were forming for the project. There was a sufficient level of trust to create an honest and open dialogue about the issues surrounding teen sex. From there, I created some scenarios based on what they were saying before holding a workshop where we had the kids play out the scenes. I recorded them that first time, a practice I have since abandoned.

I want things to be as real as possible without crossing any dangerous lines and even the best actor cannot be natural if they know the camera’s rolling.

I then did research—I had plenty of statistics at my disposal from funding agencies, sponsors, and other stakeholders. The Abstinence vs. Contraceptive debate was just beginning to rage and as I formulated the characters and plot of the play, I found myself right in the middle of it. We lost out on a $10,000 grant because my gut was telling me that to honor our Company members and those they would be performing for, we couldn’t take a solely Abstinence stance. Abstinence was the choice of one of the couples in the story, but the other two couples represented the personal costs of teen pregnancy and HIV/AIDS.

We won several regional and national awards with “Think it Thru Revue” and the play toured Arizona and had performances in several other states for two and a half years. When we started New Mystics Theatre Company in NJ in 2005, I rewrote the script to be a non-musical under the title “Thinkin’ it Over.” It has been touring ever since, with ongoing edits based on feedback from Company members, requests from hiring organizations, and the rapidly changing times.

The past five years working with my co-directors and the talented performers of New Mystics North and South have allowed me to continually refine our methods of creating new works using statistical and methods-based research, discussion sessions with Company members, and improvisation. Our play “7 Reasons to Say No,” about drug and alcohol addiction, was created in the rehearsal space during many hours of rigorous improvising of scenarios where the Company members’ training in realistic portrayal and use of “impediments” (such as being high or drunk) was pushed to the absolute limits.

Just last week I worked with 15 members of New Mystics North and Company Director Ralph Colombino on generating material and ideas for our forthcoming show on teen suicide, “No One Hears Unless You Scream.” The scenarios we worked through were based primarily on a discussion moderated by our staff with Company members last November. Tears were shed and skills again pushed to the limit. No one has to remind any of us how serious this is. Eight teen suicides in a single New Jersey county in the past two and half years is reminder enough. Every person in that room that day has been touched by suicide at least once in their lives, if not more.

As Resident Playwright, it is my name that appears after the title, as I apply two decades of study, theory, and practice into writing the most honest, structurally sound, and compelling plays of which I am capable, but none of my skill and dedication to the end product would succeed without the honesty, trust, and talent of our Company members.

Heartfelt responses from our target audience lets us know we are on the right track.