Academy senior finds success in nation's capitol

On a roof and under the moon, two teenage girls contemplate new ideas and life's biggest questions in Three Quarter Mass for St. Vivian, a play by Phoebe Rusch. The Arts Academy senior originally penned the play when she was a 15-year-old high school sophomore in the Chicago area, and the play was fully produced last summer by the Theatre Alliance in Washington DC. The play attracted the attention of several of the area's prominent theatre critics. Some focused primarily on the playwright's age - but they all agreed that it was an exceptional work.

Although Rusch wrote the play when she was 15, she had come to know the two characters over a lifetime of stories told by her mother. Rusch's mother's adolescent friendship and curiosity of the world are portrayed in the play's mismatched characters, Emily and Vivian. Their deepening relationship evolves into a shared tragedy as one of the girls struggles with an incurable degenerative disease.

Anne Marie Oomen, one of Rusch's creative writing instructors at the Academy, admires the delicate balance that her student struck in the writing of the play. "Even though Phoebe looks at the disease and its effects on the relationship, the story is about the friendship, its fragility and endurance, and not about the drama of the disease - that's the trick to writing a play about illness and Phoebe manages that beautifully - which is why the play succeeds."

Rusch arrived at Interlochen in 2005 after winning the Academy's semi-annual Creative Writing contest, an important tool for identifying promising young writers. In her first year at the Academy, Rusch won the Playwrights' Discovery Award, which led to a performance of Three Quarter Mass for St. Vivian at the Kennedy Center. Paul Douglas Michnewicz had directed other award-winning plays for nearly a decade, but none had captured his attention like Three Quarter Mass for St. Vivian. So he invited Rusch back to Washington and produced her play at the capital's H Street Playhouse.

"What's striking is that it's a play about people struggling with ideas. You don't find that very often," said Michnewicz in an interview with Ellen McCarthy of the Washington Post. "It's extraordinary for anyone at any age to have written this."

While this play's early success has been very welcome, Rusch has moved on with a number of other projects, which often focus on social issues. "What I admire about Phoebe's work is that she gets outside of herself," said Oomen. "Her scripts focus on situations that reflect a deep concern with world issues. Rusch's most recent scripts include plays set in Lebanon and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

In November 2006 Rusch was named a Finalist in the poetry category of the Arts Recognition and Talent Search (ARTS) program administered by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. With other Finalists, Rusch traveled to Florida in January 2007 to take part in "ARTS Week" activities, including master classes, exhibitions and performances. Finalists also competed for various other awards, including the possibility of being recommended for a Presidential Scholar in the Arts Award, traditionally announced in May.