Suehyla Young
Suehyla Young (Full name, Suehyla El-Attar Young) is a professional film/tv and stage actor with a career spanning 25 years, various collaborations, several media, and multiple recognitions. She’s also an award-winning playwright. In 2014, she was named the Alliance Theatre Artistic Fellow, focusing specifically on directing.
Languages Spoken: English and some Arabic.
Arts Disciplines: Theatre/Drama, Creative Writing, Storytelling
Core Content Curriculum Areas:Theatre/Drama, English/Language Arts
Specialized Content Areas: STEAM
Special Populations: BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) students, LGBTQI+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex) students
Preservice and Professional Development: Professional Development for Teaching Artists
Grade Levels: 6-8, 9-12
Geographic Availability: Metro Atlanta, North Georgia, Middle Georgia, South Georgia
“If travel and housing are provided or reimbursed, Suehyla will go anywhere.”
Program Types:
School-based Classroom Workshop(s), Hybrid Online and In-Person Content for Schools
“I’m open to developing any approach as well, with a conversation exploring what that could be.”
Program Fees:
- Workshop fees – $500 (which includes travel defined by more than 50 miles from her point of origin)
- Residency fees – 1 week – $2,500 per week (which includes travel defined by more than 50 miles from her point of origin)
- Hybrid/online One Day Workshop – $250
- Playwrite Residency – $1,500
Artistic Profile:
Suehyla El-Attar has been a professional stage actor for nearly 19 years and a professional film/TV actor for 10 years. As a playwright, she had her first play produced in 2006 at Horizon Theatre. She has received a couple of awards for her writing.
Suehyla has worked as a dramaturg with several organizations in Atlanta, helping other professional playwrights understand how to better structure the play and stay true to the story they really want to tell. In 2014, she was named the Alliance Theatre Artistic Fellow, focusing specifically on directing. When she teaches, her main goal is to point out that this art form of playwriting is one of the many paths people use to tell stories, and stories are a basic human function. The most important element in a story is want. She tells the students she encounters that nothing is more boring than a story lacking want, just like nothing is more boring than a person who doesn’t care what they want. You have to want if you want to move and advance. In that way, we are all walking stories.
Teaching Experience:
Suehyla has cultivated and developed her playwright residency program for nearly 15 years. It keeps growing and changing. The pandemic, fascinatingly, helped her grow LEAPS and bounds in how to approach the subject of playwriting, especially with students who were now unable to truly experience live theatre. (How can they write for something they don’t understand how it works?). This pocket of time propelled her empathy and awareness. As a teaching artist, her goal is to raise the appreciation of the art of theatre and the craft of writing for it. She’s not here to make artists (one doesn’t have to take a math class and become a mathematician; but that knowledge is beneficial for life, as is the exposure to theatre). By increasing students’ perceptions of how a story is created for stage, Suehyla hopes to convey how theatre is one of the many paths people use to tell stories, and stories are a basic human function. That humans ARE stories. She points out how this is supported by the existence of social media and the platforms that provided for so many to have a voice, create a voice, and share what they want to share. Theatre is the root for all this.
Sample Programs:
- Playwright Residency 5 days – Specifically designed for schools with 90 minute class time slots and/or AB schedules:
Students learn about plot structure, script formatting, write a 10minute play, how to give and receive critical response feedback, and how to incorporate the feedback into a 2nd a draft. - Playwright Residency 10 days – Specifically designed for schools with 45-55 minute class time slots — Same as the 5 day residency, but spread over 7 to 10 days.
- One-Week Playwright Residency: Students learn about plot structure, play formatting, write a one-minute play, and how to give and receive critical response feedback.
- Two-Week Playwright Residency: Students learn about plot structure, script formatting, write a 10minute play, how to give and receive critical response feedback, and how to incorporate the feedback into a 2nd a draft.
- One-Day Movement Storytelling Workshop:Using the Celeste Miller Style of storytelling, which intertwines personal narratives with self-found and inspired choreographed movement, students will learn to share and express their stories completely, learn how to create boundaries and move them, and, finally, learn what it means to be safe in one’s own story.
Sample Lesson Plans/Study Guides:
- Listing ID: 6046