Sitting next to his mother, the five-year-old boy didn’t know what to expect as the musical Singin’ in the Rain began. When it began to rain on stage, John-Paul Nickel stared in amazement. Years later, it was no surprise to his mom when he became an acting major at Pittsburgh’s Point Park University.
During Nickel’s senior year there, he took an elective course, Introduction to Playwriting, because he had been interested in short-story writing and thought the course might provide insights into acting. Each student had to write a 10-minute play every week. A month into the class, the professor, Tammy Ryan (A’90), suggested the students enter their best work in the American College Theater Festival contest. Weeks later, Nickel found himself at the regional competition awaiting the judges’ decision. The Interview, Nickel’s play, won. That meant he was off to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., where The Interview would get a reading. Nickel checked into the posh Washington and Jefferson Inn—fluffy robes in the bathroom, mints on the pillows—and decided that it was time to rethink his career path. Last year, he began pursuing his master’s degree in dramatic writing at Carnegie Mellon. He wrote another 10-minute play, Ziggy, with the help of chai lattes at Starbucks. He found himself competing again, this time at the Theater Masters’ National MFA Playwriting Competition. Ziggy won. After an all-expense paid trip to Aspen, where the play was workshopped, it was off to New York City where Ziggy was staged at Atlantic Theater’s Stage Two. Nickel smiled as he watched the actors, already thinking about his next play. —Jennifer Damico (HS’07)
