When 18-year-old playwright Kelly Lusk wrote his award-winning play "We, The Boys," he envisioned how he wanted his audience to react. But after it was staged at the Indiana Repertory Theatre, attendees had other ideas.

"After the IRT, people would come up to me and say, 'Oh, what was your show about?' I'd explain to them, and they would look at me with this really weird look, and they would say, 'That's not what I got at all, I got this,' " he said. "Just to have a play where the artist means one thing, but people interpret it in so many different ways is really, really cool."

The Young Playwrights in Process contest at the IRT gave Kelly and other young playwrights the opportunity to compete with other Indiana junior high and high school students.

The 2007 contest winners agreed that YPiP gave them the motivation, confidence and exposure needed to establish themselves as legitimate playwrights. Kelly, a 2007 graduate of Brownsburg High School, is a two-time winner of YPiP.

"YPiP has been a catalyst for all of my writing, because I always wrote plays, and then my play last year, 'Seems to Fit,' won," he said. "And then this year I wrote 'We, The Boys' and it won again, which was awesome. So you know, usually when someone wins two years in a row, it's not a fluke; it's just something that they're good at, which was a nice reinforcement."

"We, The Boys" won first place in the senior high category. It's a character-driven play that focuses on relationships and isolation. Kelly said it developed from an argument with a friend. The title was inspired by a crumpled note he found on an elementary school playground. It was a demand to be left alone by a group of boys to a group of girls and was signed "We, The Boys."

"It's a play that raises more questions, and it makes people examine how they've treated their friends and how they act with each other," he said.

Both of his plays were performed at the IRT. "Seems to Fit" was performed at the 2006 Indianapolis Fringe Festival, which is dedicated to emerging theater and other arts, including a portion called FringeNext that focuses on young people's talents.

"We, The Boys," also will be part of FringeNext at the 2007 Indianapolis Fringe Festival, which will be Aug. 24-Sept. 2.

"Anytime you can give young people a voice to write about their own issues for their own audiences, you are giving them an outlet, which is not often available to kids, especially those who are often seen as 'not belonging,' " said Pauline Moffat, executive director of the festival, now in its third year.

Kelly is currently in New York with the Brownsburg Players, who are performing "We, The Boys" in the 32nd annual Samuel French Inc. Off-Off Broadway Original Short Play Festival.

In the fall, he will attend Indiana University and be involved in the Bloomington Playwrights Project. While Kelly is now an experienced playwright, other youth are just beginning their foray into writing for the stage.

The 2007 winner of the junior high category went to a comedy, "La Princess at le Chevalier," written by 14-year-old Mikala Carpenter. She is a first-time winner of the YPiP contest and will be a freshman at Zionsville Community High School.

The story is a modern-day fairy tale that incorporates Spanish, French and English dialogue. It tells the tale of an independent princess, who runs away to avoid an arranged marriage.

"(The IRT) treated me like I was the only person around, and it felt really cool because they ignored my mom entirely," Mikala said. "Normally, adults just edge up to your parents, but they only addressed me, they wanted my advice, and they wanted to know what I wanted to do. So it was pretty cool to know that I was the center of attention, and they wanted exactly what I wanted."

To get where they are today, the YPiP contestants counted on people to help them with their writing. Mikala said her biggest inspirations were her sister and her seventh-grade English teacher. Her main character's comedic style was based on her father's personality.

Even though they've had people inspiring them, Mikala and Kelly agree writing a play isn't easy.

"The hardest thing about writing a play is just plainly writing the play," Kelly explained. "In creative writing, you can spell out exactly what you want your audience to read. You can say that she walked on the green grass with the soggy mud beneath her feet."

But in a play, the character has to react to her surroundings. She might grimace to show that mud is squishing through her toes or squeal because the grass and mud are cold.

" 'Cause if you had a play where characters just always say how they felt, it wouldn't be a very good play at all because people just don't come out and say how they feel," Kelly said.

Both teens believe they bring a unique perspective to playwriting in a field dominated by adults. Mikala said kids are best qualified to write about kids and their points of view. They can write from experience, whereas adults are trying to envision what it would be like to be young again.

Kelly said adults also can learn a lot from youth-written plays. "It's really important to support children -- especially young writers -- because it's so hard to be taken seriously, even if you're not an artist. "The most important thing you can do for children is to actually listen to what they have to say."

REPORTERS: Arielle Johnson, 12; and Saivion James, 10.

Copyright 2007 Y-Press