A skunk is loose backstage, scampering about and causing a ruckus. A Ouija board has summoned paranormal creatures. The actors, waiting to go on stage, do not know what to do — how to fix the mess and save the show, a Halloween showcase, from imminent collapse.

These events do not describe a play gone awry; instead, they are the premise of “Waiting in the Wings,” an original one-act play written by theatre senior Atlas Saavedra.

“With this play, I want to give the audience a sneak peek, albeit an exaggerated sneak peak, into what actually happens backstage when a play is being performed,” Saavedra said.

The comedy will be performed in the Brandt Black Box Theater March 6 and 7, making Saavedra one of the first students in Dreyfoos history to have an original play staged by the theatre department.

“I’m really excited because this opens a path for a lot more student produced works in the future,” Saavedra said. “It’s really nice to be a trailblazer in this sense, because I know there are a lot of budding playwrights among the younger kids in the theatre department. I’ve read some of their works, and they’re amazing. They deserve the same chance I received, and I am now hopeful that they will.”

The concept for the production derived from Saavedra’s decade of experience in theatre, including stage managing, acting, and working behind the scenes. Backstage chaos, long waits, and unexpected crises, which Saavedra said occur in the wings of every production, are the basis for the show. She began acting at eight years old.

“I was a very shy kid,” Saavedra said. “My aunt told my mom to put me in a theatre class to get me out of my shell a little bit. I would say it’s worked.”

In eighth grade, Saavedra began to “gravitate towards playwriting.” At the age of 13, she entered her first original script into the Florida Junior Thespian State Festival One Act Competition and earned top honors.

“That experience showed me that anything was possible if I set my mind to it,” Saavedra said. “If it hadn’t been for the success I had with that very first script, I don’t know if I would have kept going with playwriting.”

After attending Bak Middle School of the Arts, Saavedra attended two other high schools, G-Star School of the Arts for her freshman year and Oxbridge Academy for her sophomore year, before settling in at Dreyfoos in her junior year. She said that participating in theatre programs at two other public high schools influenced how she approaches playwriting.

“The theatre departments of the other two high schools I went to were way less privileged than we are,” Saavedra said. “They have less funding, less props, less freedom. This taught me how to write plays with a budget in mind.  I wouldn’t have been able to write ‘Waiting in the Wings’ if it hadn’t been for my time acting at less privileged schools.”

Before “Waiting in the Wings,” Saavedra wrote multiple one-act and ten-minute plays, some of which took years to finalize, finding rewriting to be “central to (her) process.” Her portfolio includes works such as “Just Another Day,” “No One Was Lying,” and “Rearview Mirror,” the latter of which she plans to submit for worldwide distribution through Tiny Scripted, a Brooklyn-based distribution company that she signed a contract with last year.

“I want to give them a nice, updated draft of ‘Rearview Mirror’ that they can put on their website,” Saavedra said. “Hopefully, they can distribute it to theatres across the world. That’s the dream as a playwright, to have your work shared with the world and performed by diverse crews of actors.”

Live feedback and the critical response process is “vital” to the success of all of her scripts, according to Saavedra. This is when a group of actors, or friends, read the script aloud in a circle and provide feedback to the playwright about what was unclear and what they enjoyed about the play.

“You don’t really know how certain lines are going to land until you hear them come out of an actor’s mouth,” Saavedra said. “You also never anticipate how much somebody who knows nothing about your story is going to misinterpret what you believed to be simple details.”

The idea for “Waiting in the Wings” presented itself in the spring of Saavedra’s sophomore year while she was writing another script in her free time. When she learned at the end of her junior year that the theatre department was considering a student-produced show for the Black Box, she revisited the idea.

“I figured, what better time than now to write it?” Saavedra said. “I spent all of last summer and most of the first semester of my senior year writing and revising. I hated my first few drafts so much. I thought the answer each time was to make ‘Waiting in the Wings’ crazier.”

Saavedra “hate(s) writing comedies,” believing they often do not land well with a live audience. Thus, despite the comedic nature of the show, she did not write “Waiting in the Wings” with the intention of making people laugh, instead hoping that laughter would ensue because of the “wild scenarios” in the script.

“My goal wasn’t exactly to make a comedy or even a show that made sense,” Saavedra said. “This show is a love letter to high school theatre and was created with the primary goal of crafting a space where the actors could have fun.”

The actors in the production were cast by theatre teacher Savannah Whetsell, the director of both “Waiting in the Wings” and its accompanying show in the theatre department’s spring double bill, “Cosmology,” written by theatre senior Zepplyn Berry.

“What’s been really fun and exciting for me as a director is that I actually signed on to this without knowing anything about either show, which is different for me,” Ms. Whetsell said. “All of the thoughts and ideas have to be generated in the room. It’s the first time anyone is telling this story, so we have to figure out not only the lines, but also the visuals.”

Berry previously had another one of her one-act plays, “Homesick,” produced by the department last school year, making her the only student in the past decade to have two original plays performed at Dreyfoos. According to Berry, after the “success” of “Homesick,” theatre teachers began placing greater trust in student playwrights within the department.

“I want student playwriting to be something that outlives me at Dreyfoos because we focus on technical theatre and musical theatre and acting, but we don’t really have a ton of resources for the playwrights of the department,” Berry said.

That trust ultimately led to Ms. Whetsell proposing a formal plan to the other theatre teachers at the end of last school year outlining how student-written works could be produced as part of the department’s upcoming season.

“I have always been interested in fostering our student playwrights,” Ms. Whetsell said. “It’s always been one of my goals as an educator here at Dreyfoos. It is something that we don’t have in our program. We don’t have a class for it. So I wanted to try and figure out a way to support it; thus, the double bill was born.”

Both productions are currently in the rehearsal stage. While Ms. Whetsell is serving as the primary director of the shows, Berry and Saavedra both have input in the creative process. They work with actors to adjust the script, explain the purpose behind the dialogue, and help assist Ms. Whetsell in blocking the shows.

“I am a very collaborative director,” Ms. Whetsell said. “I have worked with both Atlas and Zepplyn multiple times, so I know how to communicate with both of them. There’s a trust that goes both ways. I trust them to give a note, change a line, or speak to the cast when they need to, and they trust me to build the world that we can play in.”

A future in playwriting never seemed “realistic” for Saavedra. She did not plan to pursue it professionally until after her deal with Tiny Scripted, the inclusion of her show in the upcoming double bill, and the accolades she received from past works, including recognition from Palm Beach Dramaworks and Florida Atlantic University’s Theatre Lab.

“I used to think, ‘Financially, how would I survive?’” Saavedra said. “Now I think there might be a future where I can actually do this full-time. That is the ideal future for me.”

As opening night for the double bill approaches, the script is nearly finalized, with final tweaks being made as actors and the production team test physical comedy and staging in the Black Box. After this production concludes, she plans to continue writing and revising scripts, using this experience to “hone her craft.”

“If you write something that is true to your heart, and you put in the work and the effort, you will succeed,” Saavedra said. “Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t write the play, the book, the story. Don’t let someone else discredit you just because you’re young. Our voices matter too.”

This story was originally published on The Muse on March 4, 2026.