MacFest Playwright Spotlight: Moriah Weiss ’27

By Jizelle Villegas ’26

During this year’s MacFest, the Theater and Dance Department held an event in the James A. Williams black box Theater, on September 27th and 28th, where they held staged readings of six different student written plays. The Words had a wonderful conversation with Moriah Weiss ’27 about an excerpt of her play Bright Young Minds that was selected to be read at the event. Students and their families got to hear ten minute excerpts performed by students that expressed interest in acting in this event. The shows were a hit; there was a full house, and due to capacity they had to turn away some people. If you missed the staged readings, don’t fret because Weiss is giving us insight into her experience as a playwright. 

Weiss is a Biology major, but took Playwriting, cross-listed with English and Theater and Dance, during her first year at Macalester. The excerpt read during the staged readings was the very first scene, so we were curious to know what Bright Young Minds was mainly about. 

Weiss summarized it: “This student [attends] Harmon University, which is just not the university that would have been their first choice to go to. Very academically-minded and kind of feels left out, kind of an outcast because of that… But then this mysterious figure comes along, named Dylan. Immediately they form a connection around their shared academic interests… It spurs into the main character, Sandy, being manipulated by this mysterious figure into making some not great choices.” 

Sandy is eventually able to “find their footing in the end” due to help and intervention from an old friend. Weiss intended for this playwriting project to be more character-driven, since her previous works have been more plot-based. She wrote a play back in high school, so Playwriting was a way for her to continue writing as a hobby and have more perspective about how she wrote her first play. 

Weiss discussed the process of coming up with the idea and the approach she took to write her play. In the Playwriting class, at the beginning of the semester, the students did an idea generator activity that got them to think about what they wanted to write, which helped Weiss form what Bright Young Minds came to be. “It was more of a character study in a sense, and isolating a relationship between these two individuals that kind of intrigued me,” she said. 

Writing a play is one thing, but having it be chosen to be performed for an audience is a whole other thing. When asking Weiss about how she felt being notified and getting selected to be performed she said: “I’m going to be honest with you, I started laughing. I was like ‘There’s no way.’ I guess I was surprised because again I didn’t feel a lot of pride in this piece, but I think there were still good elements to it.” We both laughed at this anecdote Weiss shared, and it resonated with the English/writing brain a lot of us have when it comes to our work. 

When it came to the idea of being performed, she said: “It’s always strange, that first kind of jolt of like ‘Those are my words being spoken by other people.’ But the actors that played the roles really embodied them really well… It’s not really your play anymore, they’re taking it in their own hands and I trust them to do that and do the characters justice as I, the writer, might not have given them just with words on the page.” The excerpts were brought to life during the event, but the week before, there was rehearsal time to run through lines, and Weiss got to sit through that. She worked with our very own Birdie Keller ’25, who was directing the rehearsals, and Jarek Pastor, a playwriting professor, and saw the different notes and cues that Keller and the actors were picking up as they were rehearsing. “The actors seemed to enjoy it,” Weiss said, followed by a small laugh. 

After having this talk with Weiss, it seems that the audience at the Staged Readings during MacFest were lucky to have experienced live readings of creative work from different Macalester students. Weiss expressed that she felt glad to have been a part of something as unique as the MacFest readings. This event allowed a creative space for students to produce something, either on paper or on the stage. Playwriting is offered every semester by different professors! Weiss really recommends it for any major since it offers helpful skills with writing, refining ideas, and making sure you say what you want to say concisely. This upcoming semester, it’ll be offered on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:00-4:30 pm.