For most college seniors, the last semester is a wild ride of living it up with friends and enjoying the final months of justifying reckless behavior. Ryan Stevens, instead, decided to write a play.
The fourth-year English student from Belton, S.C. wrote and is directing his original work, “Player King,” which revolves around the cast and crew of a “Hamlet” production at the Electric City Playhouse. One of the actors gets snubbed for the title role and then sets out to reclaim the part by charming one of the actresses.
“I was drawn to this idea because I knew I wanted to do a play here at the university, and I knew I needed to make it a big one… because, I mean, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing,” Stevens says. “Nothing is harder than writing verse. Nothing. But once I had the idea, I knew I couldn’t wimp out and not do it.”
Even in high school, Stevens knew that he wanted to become a writer. The passion began by him coming up with, as he describes it, “stories, characters and plots and kooky events to build a narrative around.”
“I’ve tried my hand at writing through all kinds of mediums. You know, short stories, screenplays, poetry and plays,” Stevens says. Mostly short plays, little 10-minute things, but I’m roommates and friends with a lot of theatre majors and actors here at USC, so I figured I’d try full-length plays and maybe something would happen. Turns out playwriting is a lot of fun.”
Although Stevens has written other plays, which have covered topics like bad marriages, stand-up comedians and even Ancient Greece, this is his first-ever fully produced play.
During the writing process, Stevens says that he tries to start out by developing two things: concept and character.
“For concept, I thought ‘what do I want this to be about, or where is this going to be? What’s the main focus thematically?’” says Stevens. “From there, I start developing characters, thinking about who they are, where they’re from, what they talk like, what they do or don’t talk about, so that by the time I write the first word, the people involved in my head are already semi-fully-formed.”
Stevens has listed William Shakespeare, Sarah Ruhl, David Mamet, and Edward Albee as the influences that inspired him to become a playwright.
After he graduates from USC this May, Ryan plans to attend graduate school in California, Iowa, or the New England area for a Masters of Fine Arts in either creative writing or playwriting. When his schooling is completed, Stevens says he hopes to write for television or have some of his ideas taken from the stage to the big screen.
Make sure you check out “Player King” on April 23-26 in the Booker T. Washington Lab Theatre.
