> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # SMC playwright goes national - URL: https://www.smdp.com/smc-playwright-goes-national/ - Published: 2002-04-06T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T00:13:50.000Z - Author: Andrew Fixmer - Tags: Education, Santa Monica, #archive-import *Work will be showcased in Washington, D.C.* A Santa Monica College playwright has made it to the big time. Johnathan Payne’s work has been chosen from a pool of 360 college plays to appear at what has been dubbed the “Rose Bowl of College Theater.” Payne’s play “Slavery” has been selected to appear at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. from April 15-21 — an accomplishment that has launched many professional playwrights’ careers. Of the 11 plays chosen, Payne also has won the John Cauble Short Play Award, which will professionally publish and distribute his play, and give him a $1,000. The hour-long play is based on the real lives of seven slaves interviewed in the 1930s when an obscure Great Depression-era program assigned writers to document the lives of former slaves. After each character delivers a powerful monologue about the hardships endured under slavery, they sing an African American spiritual emphasizing their pain and suffering. “We all know that slavery was this bad, horrible thing and the play can get really heavy,” said Payne, 22\. “The trick is to find the lighter moments and stress those too. We wanted the audience to understand these people’s lives but we also wanted them leave on a positive note.” > “The trick is to find the lighter moments and stress those too. We wanted the audience to understand these people’s lives but we also wanted them leave on a positive note.” — — JONATHAN PAYNE SMC playwright The play is performed by six black theater arts SMC students as well as Payne. It traces slaves being sold on the auctioning block to when they were freed by President Abraham Lincoln. His college theater advisors, Adrianne Harrop and Terrin Adair-Lynch, brought the idea of writing a play based on the interviews to Payne and helped him with the research and the writing. “It was very comfortable in a sense, having two advisors involved in helping me with this,” he said. “They were very supportive and kept me structured.” Payne wrote the piece in about three months, and intended it to be performed in small theaters where actors can easily interact with the crowd. Though he didn’t know the size of the Kennedy Center Theater, he thought the play is better suited for smaller venues. 310,“We speak directly to the audience and we try to address them personally,” Payne said. “In a smaller theater the actors can really reach the audience.” The entire cast will fly to Washington, D.C. next week to perform the piece and attend seminars workshops led by professional writers and performers. Payne, who has never set foot outside of California, said he is looking forward to the trip and seeing the Capitol. “I just hope there is some time to get a little sight-seeing in,” he said. “I hear there might be some interesting things to see there.” Payne, who is very soft-spoken and accents his speech with an almost nervous laugh, has commuted by bus — he doesn’t own a car — from his apartment in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles to the SMC campus for the past two years. He attended a public high school in West Los Angeles where he said he fell madly in love with a girl, but he couldn’t get her to agree to a date. So, to see her more often, he said he joined the school’s theater group that she was involved in and auditioned for the school play to impress her. But as Payne became more involved with the theater group, he said the girl became less important, until acting and writing consumed his time. “I guess its a pretty stupid reason,” Payne said, “but that’s the only reason I got involved with theater at all — to impress a girl.” Payne said he’ll use the prize money to pay off his credit card debt and use any royalties from his play to attend performing arts school. On Friday he was auditioning for talent scouts sent from The Guilford School of Acting in England. But Payne said the most interesting aspect of being published would be to see another theater group perform his play. “That would be the ultimate,” he said, “to see how someone else interprets your own work.” ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/040602-01_01.jpg) ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/040602-01_02.jpg) of Santa Monica College Joel Perry, center, sings ‘Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child’ after delivering a monologue about being sold at a slavery auction. (Photo: Photo courtesy) *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 6, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/040602.pdf?ref=smdp.com)