A self-proclaimed "theater kid" and student playwright Joan "J.C." Pankratz feels like a winner.
Pankratz, a senior English writing major and women's studies minor, has been named one of the four national finalists for the John Cauble Award for Outstanding Short Play — one of the highest prasies for an aspiring playwright.
Her play, "Honest to God," is a one-woman show, in which one actress performs the roles of several different people — both women and men. The main character is a woman in her 30s who returns to her mother's home in Iowa since her mother died and left her the house.
"She's kind of an outcast and people are sort of like, ‘Why is she moving back here?'" Pankratz said of the main character.
The woman later notices a burning bush in her backyard and attempts to put it out, to no avail. Since she doesn't know what to do about the phenomenon, she covers it. When she forgets to cover it at a later time, someone else discovers it by accident, prompting the whole town to camp out by the house and await the next sign.
"Watching the audience get introduced to the character at the beginning of the play is my favorite part," Pankratz said.
Pankratz likes to watch how other people watch the play and see the audience's bewilderment at the situations happening onstage. She also has the opportunity to see how they respond to the voice of the main character.
"It's really her story," Pankratz said. "There's a sense of total isolation that I think we can sort of all relate to. She's really completely alone, and I think sometimes we all feel that way."
"Honest to God" was written when Pankratz took Professor Chris White's Writing for Performance class the first semester of her junior year. The class members were to write on the same topic for an assignment — obsession and ritual. The class divided into two smaller groups, and Pankratz's group decided on the theme "green." Her task was to merge the two themes for the scene.
"I was getting to bed one night, and I had this thought," Pankratz said. "I had this really clear image of a woman going out and tending a burning bush in her backyard and that's sort of where it started."
"Honest to God" has certainly evolved considerably since then, especially since she only wrote the first scene of the final product for that class. During the second semester of Pankratz's junior year, she studied in New York and decided to add three scenes to the play, lengthening its runtime from five minutes to 35 minutes.
Last November, she e-mailed the play in for consideration for the John Cauble Award for Outstanding Short Play, and she heard back in December. Pankratz was excited to go to the regional conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and she's thrilled to see her work performed at the Kennedy Center for the American College Theater National Festival on April 21.
"I've never actually been there, so getting to go there and see a professional team direct and produce this reading of my work is pretty incredible," Pankratz said.
Although Pankratz doesn't know if she's won the award yet, the chance to see her play performed at the Kennedy Center Family Theater in Washington, D.C. makes her feel as though she has won, regardless of whether she receives the award or not, which will be decided in April.
"I feel like just that opportunity is beyond anything that I had ever imagined for this play when I was up at 4 a.m. writing it frantically," she said.
Pankrantz is now open to submitting other plays for awards in the future. "Honest to God" is the first one-act play that Pankratz has written, but she has written several ten-minute plays and has co-written a full-length play.
"I was always a theater kid," Pankratz said.
She dabbled in technical theater work and loved being in that ‘community' while growing up. She tried writing ten-minute plays and received positive feedback, so she continued along that route.
"My favorite thing about playwriting is that it is a collaborative effort," Pankratz said. "I write the play by myself, but a play is not just meant to be read on a page. A play is meant to be performed and to do that you have to work in close collaboration with other people."
She considers it a tremendous privilege to give her work to other people and see what type of art they make with it. She also believes that DePauw's professors have been immensely helpful with her playwriting skills, as they have given up time and spirit to help her invest in her writing work.
Although playwriting comes with challenges, Pankratz definitely plans on continuing to write and work with other artists in the future.
"This play has been really successful, and I've really enjoyed where it has taken me. I'm really excited to move on to the next thing."