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A New York Times feature on “Initiative” by Else Went ’13 reveals that the concept for the play can be traced “to an undergraduate playwriting class she took at Sarah Lawrence in 2011. Her professor, the playwright Lucy Thurber, asked students to write a scene about kindness or generosity.”
“Initiative”, Went’s Off-Broadway debut at the Public Theater, is a coming of age story about seven high schoolers in a small California town. Amrita Ramanan, who directs the Public Theater’s new work development program, is quoted as saying, “I believe that this is the definitive play of a generation.”
Went is an alum of the acclaimed Emerging Writers Group at the Public Theater, an organization with a long history of launching Award-winning plays and musicals, starting with Hair in 1967 and, more recently, Hamilton.