Teen Ensemble Days

Join ATE before it's too late.

UPCOMING SESSIONS BEGIN ON

Oct 4, 2025

10:00 am

Dec 6, 2025

10:00 am

Alleyway Teen Ensemble (ATE) is back for more creating and theatre-making this fall.

Join us for our one-day sessions for the first time to get a taste of what the full two-week summer experience is like, or to meet up with old friends.

These one-day sessions stand fully on their own, and no prior experience is required.

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CREATE YOUR OWN PLAY… AND BE THE STAR

Since 2013, playwrights Jon Elston and Bella Poynton have supported the creativity of middle and high school theatre artists, empowering young theatre makers to create and produce 100% original new world-premiere comedies, dramas, and musicals in their two-week camp. Learn and grow as artists while you devise, write, and develop a full-length evening of original work for the Alleyway mainstage!

Now, experience all (well, most) of that magic packed into a super powered one day session. Students will explore theatre games, and develop skills to create their own works of theatre.

PERFECT FOR STUDENTS WHO…

Enjoy improv and theatre games
Like to write or create their own stories
Aspire to be serious theatre artists (actors, directors, or playwrights)
Love to laugh and meet new friends!

DETAILS

Total cost $99 per student, per session
For all students age 11-17
Choose your session:
-- Saturday October 4, 10am - 6pm
-- Saturday December 6, 10am - 6pm

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A limited amount of partial scholarships are available annually to those students in need. Please contact us to inquire, or reach out to make a contribution to the scholarship fund to make our classes more accessible to all WNYers!

Jon Elston and Bella Poynton

JON ELSTON is a career educator and the award-winning author of over thirty plays and musicals. In 2002 Elston co-founded Buffalo's Road Less Traveled Productions, where he supported the development of hundreds of new plays and the production of nearly forty world premieres by WNY playwrights. His own plays have been produced in Buffalo, New York City, Washington, D.C., and online. He has taught and directed at the University of Buffalo, Niagara University, Medaille College, NCCC, Villa Maria, and the University of Omaha, as well as in WNY schools as a theatre instructor and certified ELA teacher.

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BELLA POYNTON is a playwright, director, and theatre scholar from Buffalo, NY. She was a Regional Playwriting Resident at Road Less Traveled Productions in 2016, and is the director of Queen City Playwrights, Buffalo’s New Play Development Workshop for area writers. Bella's plays have been produced and developed at New World Stages, The Bechdel Group, MadLab Theatre, Quantum Dragon Theatre, Alleyway Theatre, Looking Glass Theatre, The Great Plains Theatre Festival, The Pittsburgh New Works Festival, Road Less Traveled Productions, 3rd Act Theatre Company, Otherworld Theatre Company, and Post-Industrial Productions. Bella has been a finalist for the Christopher Brian Wolk Playwriting Award, the Heideman Award, the Woodward/Newman Drama Award, the Sam French OOB Festival, and the Maxim Mazumdar Playwriting Competition.

Recently, Bella’s short play The Offer was published in The Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2019 (Smith & Krauss) and her play Eleven Thing that Almost Happened to Rick and Hannah, and One thing that Actually Did is included in The Best American Short Plays 2018-2019 (Applause Publishing). Bella is a co-editor of Interventions at Contemporary Theatre Review, the literary manager of Post-Industrial Productions, and the Graduate Liaison for the Mid America Theatre Festival’s Playwriting Symposium. Bella holds a BFA in Acting from Boston University, an MFA in Playwriting from The Iowa Playwrights Workshop and is currently PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at SUNY Buffalo. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Humanities at Medaille College.