Paper Wings

Paper Wings is Theatre Exile’s in-school residency outreach program.  Experienced, professional teaching artists go into the classroom once a week and work with students to help them find their voices, build confidence, work collaboratively, and engage with the world in an empowered way.

Each Paper Wings student writes and performs their own work as part of two annual festivals: our Winter Monologue Festival and our Spring Play Presentations.  Working with their teaching artist and classroom teacher, students learn to write and perform original monologues and plays based on conflicts they want to explore, whether autobiographical or the outside conflicts they feel most need to be tackled today.

Currently, Paper Wings operates in two schools in our South Philadelphia neighborhood: Andrew Jackson Elementary School and Furness High School.  At Andrew Jackson, Education Coordinator Steve Gravelle works with James Lindburgh and his middle school playwriting students.  At Furness, Mr. Gravelle works with Barbara Keating and her high school English students.  Paper Wings also offers a summer camp program for elementary school-aged students at Columbus Square Park: mycolumbussquare.org/

Since the program began in 2007, our students have been awarded numerous awards for both monologues and plays, including both first- and second-place awards for monologues and plays from the Philadelphia Young Playwrights festivals.

Read more about Paper Wing and other programs in Andrew Jackson School in the Philadelphia Tribune here: www.phillytrib.com.

“College is one of the biggest steps in my life, because in my family, they had to stop to work and couldn’t go to college. What would my mom say about me not getting in? Would she be mad?”

Gilbert Mariano, Slow Day