It’s “Sweet 16” for Touchstone Theatre’s Young Playwrights’ Festival.

The South Bethlehem theater’s 16th year of its acclaimed showcase of new plays written by local elementary and middle school students will be live-streamed, 8:30 p.m. May 22.

Young Playwrights’ Lab is an eight-week arts and literacy residency developed by Touchstone and the Bethlehem Area School District using theater to engage students in writing and to provide a platform for creative self-expression.

Through theater improvisation, writing exercises and collaborative critique, each student writes an original one-act play to be considered for performance in the annual Young Playwrights’ Festival.

The plays that emerge display the wide variety and depth of the students’ imagination, and often include wild and whimsical elements like alien creatures, sentient plants and animals, mysterious portals and magical princesses.

In addition, the plays include universal themes of family, friendship, bravery and kindness.

For the 16th festival, 10 plays were chosen from nearly 100 plays submitted from this year’s program.

Plays that will be presented in their entirety are “The Adventures of Detective Dog and the Case of the Missing Kids” by Blaire Hartney of Lincoln Elementary School; “The Treasurehunters” by Antonios Tatakis of Farmersville Elementary School; “Petunia the Penguin” by Maddie Lyons of Spring Garden Elementary School; “A Time to Remember” by Samantha Suarez of Nitschmann Middle School, and “Luna and Rico Go to the Moon” by Emma Huertas of Freemansburg Elementary School.

Semi-finalist plays that will be presented as short videos and excerpts are “The Mystical Lizard” by Jazanae Jackson of Fountain Hill Elementary School; “The 1/2 of the Alphabet” by Ezerett Frack of Buchanan Elementary School; “The Plane Crash” by Audrey Vargas of Marvine Elementary School; “The Petter Portal” by Lena Booke Blazure of Governor Wolf Elementary School, and “The Jack and Jill Problem” by Dilahliah Gonzalez Simonetly of Donegan Elementary School.

The festival performance includes a reading of “Letters to My February Self” written by middle school young playwrights from Casa Guadalupe Center.

“This year more than any other, the need for self-expression was so important,” says Mary Wright, Education Director at Touchstone.

“I am so grateful for all of the efforts made by the teaching partners at each school and each of the Touchstone teaching artists for the extra lengths they went to bring the program to the students. I am also grateful for the students who continued to imagine and create in an inspiring way,” Wright says.

The festival has usually been presented at Lehigh University’s Zoellner Arts Center. However, because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, last year’s festival was held online with play readings on Zoom.

Typically, the performance was followed by Touchstone’s annual gala, which raises money to support Touchstone’s arts in education programming.

Instead, at 7:30 p.m. May 22, there will be a “Sweet 16” party for the student playwrights, their families and teachers, and invited guests at Touchstone Theatre.

In lieu of the gala, Touchstone is accepting donations for next year’s program: www.touchstone.org/donate.

At 8:30 p.m. the free festival will go live with a combination of live and filmed performances of the plays being streamed by the Touchstone Ensemble from the Touchstone parking lot.

A link to the performance will be posted on Touchstone’s social media May 22.

Information: www.touchstone.org

“Curtain Rises” is a column about the theater, stage shows, the actors in them and the directors and artists who make them happen. To request coverage, email: Paul Willistein, Focus editor, pwillistein@tnonline.com