For the past two weeks, student playwrights Aaron Zemach, Leah Barsanti and Selena Lane have cycled through rehearsals, re-writings and complete re-workings of their scripts, some of which were first drafted more than a year ago.

All of this was done in preparation for this Friday and Saturday, when their work will be performed for the first time for the A. E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival. The playwrights submitted their plays to the Performing Arts Department (PAD) after taking Advanced Playwriting with Washington University’s Playwright-in-Residence and Festival producer, Carter Lewis.

Although the playwrights all submitted their plays to the Performing Arts Department with the hopes of seeing their imagination and writing come to life on the stage, they each had their own story to tell and unique learning experience.

The annual “Hotch Fest” is in honor of and funded by the famous writer and humanitarian, A. E. Hotchner. Every year, between three and five student-written plays are chosen to be a part of the program. Once their stories are selected, the playwrights redraft their work over the summer. In September, they go through an intensive two-week workshop working with actors, faculty directors and a professional dramaturg.

“After two weeks of rehearsals and rewrites, the plays are presented in script-in-hand readings for an always enthusiastic and raucous audience,” Lewis explained. “There is a talk-back after each show with the playwright and the guest dramaturg. The process is stressful but incredible.”

Senior Leah Barsanti submitted a play to the Festival her junior year and was turned down. She then wrote the first draft of her play “‘If I Were You’ and other Elvis Presley Songs” in Carter’s class and edited it for an entire year before submitting it to the Festival. But it was worth the wait; Barsanti’s play was not only chosen to be performed this Saturday at 7 p.m., but it will also be featured as part of the PAD Season this spring as a world-premiere production.

The winning story is about a girl named Sadie, whose brother starts training under the number-one Elvis impersonator in California and what happens when he takes the pretending too far.

“It’s about identity, who we choose to be and whether it’s still pretending if we lose ourselves in the process,” Barsanti said.

Like the other playwrights, Barsanti was lucky enough to work with the professional guest dramaturg, Michele Volansky. She is chair and associate professor in the Department of Drama at Washington College and has worked on 150 new and established plays; it’s no surprise that her experience and presence were much appreciated by the playwrights throughout their workshop.

“Michele doesn’t push. She has her ideas about things, but she leaves you to them rather than telling you how you do it. It’s very much about my creative process, and she is there to support and influence that.” Barsanti said.

Junior Aaron Zemach is the youngest participant in the Festival this year. As a computer science major, Zemach is fascinated by recent research studies.

“This play was inspired by a bunch of research that’s been coming out recently about how psychologically detrimental social websites are—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest—take your pick. People who use these sites are depressed, and they can’t find meaning in their life, but they keep going back anyways.” Zemach said.

Zemach wanted to explore this phenomenon further, so he conceptualized a fictional social society called “Republique” that completely revolves around social information sharing. The world that Zemach created has prompted various “eras” of stories and characters. Like most of the playwrights, Zemach has changed the plot and even central theme several times since the workshop has started.

“At our last workshop, Michele had us do an exercise where we went around the room and said what we thought the play was about. Everyone said something completely different.” Zemach said.

Last Wednesday night, Zemach thought it was about balancing the virtual and actual world. Two days later, he answered, “It’s a play about two people who see their friends move on and react in opposite ways.”

Zemach brings up the point that these workshops are meant to mostly benefit and give experience to the playwrights—the performance is a work-in-progress. Hotch Fest actors have to be just as flexible as the playwrights during this two-week process and aren’t handed the most-final copy of the script until the day before the performance.

“The staged reading is simply a step in improving the play. The best workshop experience, I think, is when everyone—cast, director, playwright, audience—has an open mind and is willing to imagine the greatest potential a play could have,” Selena Lane, a post-graduate playwright, said.

Lane submitted her play, “Howard Be Thy Name” in January, after graduating last December. This will be her second play to be performed in the Hotchner Festival. She went through the same workshop her junior year and says she can relate to the struggle her fellow playwrights are feeling for the first time.

“It’s tough to rework a whole play when you’ve got five classes and a million other things to do,” Lane said.

To find out how these hardworking students’ process turns out, don’t miss the free performances at the A. E. Hotchner Studio Theater this weekend.