The ambient lighting dims, and a spotlight shines on three distinct characters in front of a dystopian backdrop, as a night of world-molding drama and comedy begins. 

Newton North High School’s 18th Annual Playwrights’ Festival, presented at the school Thursday through Saturday, showcased eight plays created entirely by the students.

Each play was a 10-minute, one-scene act covering concepts ranging from grappling with queer identity to finding existential purpose, with sets spanning from a Louisiana hair salon to a spaceship floating about the cosmos.

“This is one of the most unique productions in terms of being student-written and student-directed,” said Michael Barrington-Haber, a theater teacher at Newton North and the technical director for Theater Ink, the school’s teaching working theater that prizes inclusion and cooperation.

“We have student designers who do the lights, the set, the sound, the costumes, the hair, the makeup, the props,” Barrington-Haber said. “It’s all student-run.” He has been a part of Theater Ink for 21 years and has contributed to the playwrights’ festival since its inception 18 years ago.

“It all started when one student said, ‘Hey, I got this play and I’ve never written a play before,” said Adam Brown, the director of Theater Ink. “And so I read it and I’m like, ‘Hey, we should do this play.’ We reached out to other kids, and they wrote about five or six plays, and that’s how the festival was born.”

Brown, who has been an active participant in the theater department for 24 years, helps the student playwrights develop their ideas and organize the page-to-stage process.

At first, Theater Ink had around five students get together and workshop their plays. Now, the school receives anywhere from 10 to 30 submissions a year. It tries to accept between eight and 10 shows. The student writers submit their works to a blind panel of judges made up of their peers, faculty and alumni.

The students begin their process in September, and throughout the year they get together in groups to edit. This is all before auditions and set design. The festival has its own part-time student tech crew.

“It’s basically a year-long process,” said Maya Macomber, a graduating senior from Newton North who has written for the festival all four years of her high school education. She is a co-coordinator of the festival and the writer and director of the play “Milkyway,” a situational comedy in which three friends accidentally explode Earth and must search the cosmos for another planet to inhabit.

“It’s amazing to see something I started thinking about in September, at the beginning of the year, actually happen on stage now in June,” Macomber said. “It’s a really cool process to get to see my play go through all the steps of it.” Macomber plans to major in film and television production at Chapman University in the fall.

Julia Bartow Fuchs, a junior at Newton North and a co-coordinator of the festival, wrote and directed “The Screen Door to the Sea,” a deeply personal story of unrequited love, friendship, and letting go. This is her third year writing for the festival.

“It’s a nine-month process,” Bartow Fuchs said. “You’re just sort of in it for this whole time, and then it’s like you’re coming up for air at the end… Everyone comes together at the end, and it’s so surreal.”

With 18 years under its belt, Theater Ink aims to amplify young voices regardless of experiences and backgrounds.

“What’s really special about this is the voices of students,” Brown said. “It’s their voice…The plays that you’re seeing are coming from them. Their experiences, their ideas, their thoughts, their creativity, and that’s what makes it really special.”

This story is part of a partnership between the Newton Beacon and the Boston University Department of Journalism.