The current first year playwrights:Inna Tsyrlin, Katherina Varga and Trip Venturella won the prestigious Scripps Innovation Challenge yesterday and a hefty cash prize! They concocted a creative and fun proposal for the NRC which involved twitter participation, celebrities and cute animals! This is a really exciting example of playwrights making waves in the university and not just within the theater department.
“The 5th Annual Scripps Innovation Challenge is a university-wide student competition to create innovative solutions to real-world media and communication problems. It is open to all Ohio University students, regardless of major. The goal is to harness the creativity of Ohio University students to develop new and innovative products, tools, or strategies that could be the basis for a startup business or a new entrepreneurial venture by an established company.”
Inna Tsyrlin gave me an EXCLUSIVE quote for our blog about their big win:
“We took this challenge on because we wanted to work as a team (ahhh… the days when we were energetic newbies to the program) and also to do something outside of the theatre department. After all the research and hurling one creative idea after another, we tried to come up with something fun; our challenge was to come up with an innovative way for the Natural Resource Defense Council (one of the largest environmental non-profits) to get more donors. We thought about how do we shape our idea and message into a story. Our playwrights’ brains kicked into gear and leaned on the structure of crafting a dramatic narrative to present our idea. And what’s more dramatic than climate change… #sad. We care about the causes of the NRDC and learning about what the non-profit does has been very interesting and inspiring. We were pleasantly surprised that we won, but grateful for the recognition of our work. Also, a big thank you to our fellow playwrights who supported us leading up to the day and during the presentation; to Erik, Charles and Merri for coming along to hear our pitch; and also to the Scripps school who made this competition open to the whole university. ”
Congrats First years and don’t spend it all in one place!
Learn more about this challenge here
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