Vienna Farlow loves both sides of the stage.
Chet Susslin / The Citizen
Vienna Farlow, of Aurora, recently won the Kitchen Theatre Company's Teen Extreme Playwriting Contest and Marathon.
Vienna Farlow, of Aurora, recently won the Kitchen Theatre Company's Teen Extreme Playwriting Contest and Marathon.
The 17-year-old Southern Cayuga High School student has been acting since she was a small child and writing plays since she was in middle school. Though she has been acting longer, Farlow's preference lies with playwriting.
“I like having a lot of control over what I put into the show, I like writing plays more than writing a short story,” Farlow said. “You don't have to do all the filler and background information.”
Farlow's writing talent was recently rewarded with a win in the Kitchen Theatre Company's Teen Extreme Playwriting Contest and Marathon. Her work was selected by a panel that included Aoise Stratford, a playwright who worked with the Kitchen Theatre as a curator for the contest.
“What I like about Vienna's writer's voice is that she has a very perceptive sense of humor” Stratford said. “She's funny, but it's a smart and insightful funny, and it plays well in the short play format.”
As part of the contest, Farlow wrote a one-act play within a span of two days given only a prop, a piece of set dressing, a sound effect and a line of dialogue that needed to be included in the script. Her script was then rehearsed and acted within another two days at the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca.
Farlow struggled with the process of crafting a play from the provided objects until she stepped back, created her own idea and found a way to work the objects into it.
“If I don't have any clue what I want to write, it's torture,” she said.
The result was “Public Service Announcement,” a work Farlow describes as a comment on people who don't use common sense. The play consists of a series of vignettes in which a conscientious observer points out serious breaches of common sense, such as using a butterfly net to water plants or eating dairy food if one is lactose intolerant.
“I thought the play turned out rather well, but it was hard going there at first,” Farlow said.
The script was Farlow's fourth. Her resume also includes “A Fowl Time at Camp,” a children's play about a duck that goes missing in a camp; “Critique,” a send-up of a murder mystery that uses audience plants, and “Just Say Cheese,” in which two wedges of cheese meet a magical bottle of sangria that grants them three wishes.
Farlow often finds inspiration for her plays in unusual cartoons she finds online. She also attempts to infuse her work with contemporary messages.
“Everything I've written has some social commentary to it,” Farlow said.
When Farlow isn't writing for the stage, she's acting on it. At a young age she began watching the performances of the Morgan Opera House's children's theater program before joining it. “I always liked the costumes,” Farlow said. “It's just fun to be able to go up on stage and do something outrageous.”
Though she experienced stage fright during her first few years of acting, Farlow has since grown comfortable performing.
“When I was younger I used to laugh through my lines,” she said. “I get nervous now, but not freak-out nervous, because I've become more confident in what I'm doing.”
Farlow has since performed in several plays, including roles in her high school's production of “Anything Goes” last year and “Grease” this year. She prefers portraying secondary characters to leads, due to the quirkiness often found in supporting roles.
Farlow partly attributes her growth as an actor to the encouragement she receives from her mother, Jacci, a long-time theater enthusiast.
“She was brought up on storytelling. When she was little, she could hear a story and retell the whole thing in great detail, and concisely,” Jacci said. “She has a real facility for language; she used to make up her own jokes when she was 6 or 7.”
As Vienna finishes high school, she hopes to continue her education by studying foreign languages in college. Likely funding her tuition will be two businesses Farlow operates - Fido Sticks, a brand of organic dog biscuits, and Say La Vie, a line of earrings she crafts by hand.
“She's very gifted at minute sculpting, and she loves to bake,” Jacci said.
Vienna then hopes to pursue a career as a translator for international businesses. But the theater may continue to beckon her in the future. “Acting is probably going to be a pastime,” she said. “But playwriting might become a career.”
“I like having a lot of control over what I put into the show, I like writing plays more than writing a short story,” Farlow said. “You don't have to do all the filler and background information.”
Farlow's writing talent was recently rewarded with a win in the Kitchen Theatre Company's Teen Extreme Playwriting Contest and Marathon. Her work was selected by a panel that included Aoise Stratford, a playwright who worked with the Kitchen Theatre as a curator for the contest.
“What I like about Vienna's writer's voice is that she has a very perceptive sense of humor” Stratford said. “She's funny, but it's a smart and insightful funny, and it plays well in the short play format.”
As part of the contest, Farlow wrote a one-act play within a span of two days given only a prop, a piece of set dressing, a sound effect and a line of dialogue that needed to be included in the script. Her script was then rehearsed and acted within another two days at the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca.
Farlow struggled with the process of crafting a play from the provided objects until she stepped back, created her own idea and found a way to work the objects into it.
“If I don't have any clue what I want to write, it's torture,” she said.
The result was “Public Service Announcement,” a work Farlow describes as a comment on people who don't use common sense. The play consists of a series of vignettes in which a conscientious observer points out serious breaches of common sense, such as using a butterfly net to water plants or eating dairy food if one is lactose intolerant.
“I thought the play turned out rather well, but it was hard going there at first,” Farlow said.
The script was Farlow's fourth. Her resume also includes “A Fowl Time at Camp,” a children's play about a duck that goes missing in a camp; “Critique,” a send-up of a murder mystery that uses audience plants, and “Just Say Cheese,” in which two wedges of cheese meet a magical bottle of sangria that grants them three wishes.
Farlow often finds inspiration for her plays in unusual cartoons she finds online. She also attempts to infuse her work with contemporary messages.
“Everything I've written has some social commentary to it,” Farlow said.
When Farlow isn't writing for the stage, she's acting on it. At a young age she began watching the performances of the Morgan Opera House's children's theater program before joining it. “I always liked the costumes,” Farlow said. “It's just fun to be able to go up on stage and do something outrageous.”
Though she experienced stage fright during her first few years of acting, Farlow has since grown comfortable performing.
“When I was younger I used to laugh through my lines,” she said. “I get nervous now, but not freak-out nervous, because I've become more confident in what I'm doing.”
Farlow has since performed in several plays, including roles in her high school's production of “Anything Goes” last year and “Grease” this year. She prefers portraying secondary characters to leads, due to the quirkiness often found in supporting roles.
Farlow partly attributes her growth as an actor to the encouragement she receives from her mother, Jacci, a long-time theater enthusiast.
“She was brought up on storytelling. When she was little, she could hear a story and retell the whole thing in great detail, and concisely,” Jacci said. “She has a real facility for language; she used to make up her own jokes when she was 6 or 7.”
As Vienna finishes high school, she hopes to continue her education by studying foreign languages in college. Likely funding her tuition will be two businesses Farlow operates - Fido Sticks, a brand of organic dog biscuits, and Say La Vie, a line of earrings she crafts by hand.
“She's very gifted at minute sculpting, and she loves to bake,” Jacci said.
Vienna then hopes to pursue a career as a translator for international businesses. But the theater may continue to beckon her in the future. “Acting is probably going to be a pastime,” she said. “But playwriting might become a career.”
