He’s wright!

If you have seen a play at Cambridge-Isanti High School in the last few years, you probably caught a performance by Evan Goebel. The 2022 graduate sang and danced his way across the Richard G. Hardy Stage as the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz” last fall, took on the part of Horace Vandergelder in this spring’s production of “The Matchmaker,” among many others.

But throughout these last few months, Evan was also playing another role, that of playwright. His work on his first one-act play, “Pink,” took him to the Minnesota State Thespian Festival, where he was awarded a superior rating. This allowed Evan to take his show on the road — to the International Thespian Festival in Indiana last week. 

From among a field of 30 shows to compete at the festival, Evan’s play was one of only four chosen to be workshopped with a professional director, a professional dramaturg, and a student stage manager. Auditions for the play were held on Monday, June 20, and it was performed for a festival audience on Friday, June 24.

“I’ve met so many amazing people. I’ve met adult directors and I’ve met a lot of students who are here doing the same thing as I am, and all of them are so fun to be around. It’s such an incredible environment.”

The International Thespian Festival is a celebration of school theatre that takes placeover one week every summer. This year, Thespians and other theatre fans from five different countries gathered at Indiana University for performances, workshops led by top teaching artists, and auditions with colleges and universities.Thespians have the option to showcase their talents in the Thespy Awards program, to earn feedback for their work. 

To get as far as he did in competitiong took a lot of work. Goebel’s play is based on an incident in the life of Nelly Bly, a reporter in the late 1800s. The title is derived from Bly’s nickname of Pinky.

“The story that my show revolves around is when she went into an insane asylum,” he said. “She was there for 10 days, and she was undercover as a patient to expose the conditions of the other patients there. While she was there she discovered how horrible and how just unbearable these conditions were.”

The play starts with Nelly arriving at the island where the asylum is located, and where she is greeted by her best friend Tilly, a patient. Although most of the events in the play are true, Evan used artistic license to create an incident where Mr. Canton, administrator of the asylum, finds Nelly’s journal. 

“That never happened,” he said. “To my knowledge Mr. Canton never got ahold of her journal. But the rest of the play is true.”

Canton uses the journal to target Nelly Bly and “get in her head.” In the end of the play, as in real life, Bly publishes her story, shedding light on the deplorable conditions at the asylum. Nelly Bly is encouraged when she sees Mr. Canton get his comeuppance, but is dismayed when her dear friend Tilly doesn’t recognize her.

“And that is how the story ends,” Evan said.

Evan got the inspiration for the play from his best friend Tyler Gustafson.

“We have always wanted to write a play together,” Evan said. “One day he came to me with the idea of Nelly Bly.”

Evan chose to write the  first half of the play, focusing on the asylum. They abandoned the idea of the second act, but Evan said the pair will write together again someday. 

Once he completed the first draft of the play, Evan took it to professional writing workshops for feedback.

“I never stopped editing it, and I always continued to make it improve and grow,” he said. “I submitted it to a few contests, and now here we are.”

The first workshop was a contest setting called Minnesota Thespian Originals, where four playwrights submitted works.

“I didn’t even get close to winning,” Evan said. “But the person who was in charge of it — her name is Glenn Morehouse Olson — came to me and said, ‘I think this show has so much potential. Let’s work on it together’

“With her help, I started to transform it a little and it became so much better than it always was.”

He then met with a playwrighting professor in Scottsdale, Ariz., Bill True, who also happened to be originally from Cambridge. 

Thespian advisor Viva Anderson made the connection between the two writers, “and I met with him, and he gave me so many inspirational ideas. The show I worked on with Glenn and Bill is not even close to the one I submitted at that first contest.”

The director of his show at the festival hailed from Seattle, while cast members came from all across the United States. The play was shown in a lecture hall on Friday morning to around 150 people. The cast hadn’t seen the stage prior to the performance, and although it wasn’t ideal, the show got an excellent response.

In addition to assisting with getting his one-act up and running during Thespian week, Evan participated in workshops and college callbacks at the festival. As much as he enjoys playwrighting, performing is what he hopes to do professionally.

“This is definitely something I want to go into and explore for my future, so this is really exciting,” he said. “Having this opportunity is something I will not take for granted.”