“The Moose,” a debut production from Wyoming’s newest playwriting sensation Axel, is a tale of conflict and loss.
Actors from Sheridan’s WYO Theater are rehearsing the performance ahead of a Thursday night curtain raising at the University of Wyoming’s Thrust Theater, which seats 245 people. It’s not yet public which of the troupe’s actors will take on the starring roles: that of the hapless Tim, and that of the moose, named Moose, who (spoiler alert) ousts him from his home.
Over three scenes, Tim tries to win his home back through force (a boxing match), trickery and pleading.
During a break in production work on a recent Friday afternoon, a WyoFile reporter had the chance to ask Axel about the inspiration behind his play — the kind of darkly tinged tale where the good guy might not necessarily win.
“I wear a moose hat a lot,” the playwright said. “Like almost every day.”
Axel is 10, but almost 11. He’s a fifth grader at Rock River Elementary School, a small rural community around 40 miles north of Laramie.
He wrote “The Moose” through the Play/Write program, an arts education initiative of Laramie nonprofit theater company Relative Theatrics. (WyoFile editor Tennessee Watson is a former board member of Relative Theatrics.) Play/Write today operates in three Albany County elementary schools, where students learn the basic building blocks of writing plays and understanding theater. The curriculum builds toward its annual climax — Thursday’s showcase of 10 plays written by elementary school students and performed by theater groups of various age groups.
Besides Axel’s play, UW acting students will also perform Wooly Story, written by Karter, who is one grade below Axel at Rock Creek Elementary. Wooly is a cowboy rapper, and a sheep. Karter’s play centers on the efforts of two best friends, Addie and Layla, to attend his concert and ultimately hypnotize Wooly into a dance party.
(Play/Write asked WyoFile not to use the minor students’ last names, to protect their digital privacy.)
Another play delves into the psyche of chess pieces — a king grows insecure about the fact that the queen is really the most powerful piece on the board, and seeks to undermine her reputation in the press.
The play’s authors have not seen their work performed. They will get their first look at how the adults interpreted their characters and storylines Thursday morning, before the evening’s showcase, which is free and open to the public.
At the 2024 showcase, actors from Relative Theatrics performed a play by a Spring Creek Elementary School fifth grader named Amelia about a group of inanimate objects who together ponder whether they’re alive.
“They got very creative with it,” Amelia tells Relative Theatrics founder Anne Mason after the show, in an interview posted to YouTube. “The jokes were very funny and a lot of people laughed,” Amelia said, “and I didn’t realize that as I was writing the play.”
Though only some students’ plays get produced for the showcase, every student’s play is published and archived. This year, the program expanded for its second year in Rock River, where the students wrote and produced a play together that they will perform Thursday. The day WyoFile visited the Play/Write program at the Laramie Plains Civic Center, Play/Write founder Will Bowling was teaching Axel a computer program for capturing sounds and music to enhance that performance.
Bowling is a theatre professional who moved to Laramie in 2021 and brought Play/Write to Wyoming with him. It’s modeled after a program he helped found in 2010, during a prior life in New Orleans. By the time Bowling decamped to Albany County, that program had spread into school districts all around that fabled city of writers and musicians.
Bowling approached Mason and pitched the idea, explaining he saw a need for additional arts education in the local school system that didn’t cost school districts more funding. Relative Theatrics, he said, could serve as a “third-party arts education provider.” After a year of fundraising, the program launched in two elementary schools in 2023. Bowling hopes to expand into one or two more schools next year. Ultimately, he wants Play/Write to serve as a model for programs in other Wyoming counties.
Bowling has funded the program through a mix of federal, state and private funding streams. Like so much of the public arts in America, he’s seen a swathe of funding cut by President Donald Trump’s administration. That includes a $10,000 grant that he was awarded for this year, but which he said the federal government never actually sent to Relative Theatrics. The federal money represents around 15% of Play/Write’s budget. The cut came, Bowling said, to the Challenge America program, which the National Endowment for the Arts ended under the Trump administration.
The program existed to support “historically underserved communities that have limited access to the arts relative to geography, ethnicity, economics, and/or disability,” according to a previous federal description of the program found online.
“For Wyoming, that includes rural,” said Bowling, who was elected to the Laramie city council in 2024. “But those words are now synonymous with diversity, equity and inclusion,” he said — terms that the Trump administration has done its best to wipe out of federal funding programs.
Bowling worries for other arts programs that don’t have cute kids writing funny plays to tout when they go knocking at the doors of donors. But Play/Write will continue to expand, he said.
“Arts and culture and the cultural economy are like the fundamental underpinnings of a good communally and civically engaged society,” Bowling said. “And no matter if your kid grows up to be an engineer or to be a performing artist, the arts provide an entry point into educational rigor and achievement that is really unique.”
Take Axel and “The Moose.”
When Axel first began penning his script, the words flowed unhindered, he told WyoFile. “The start of the play was really easy,” Axel said. “I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted the boxing fight.”
But at a peer-to-peer writing session, Axel got mixed up over the development of a girl moose character, named Mooseabelle. He was stumped by a question from his peer about the connection between Moose and Mooseabelle. Were they siblings? Was it a romance?
Axel, who wishes he had a sister, settled on siblings. The writing went on, though not without its fits and starts.
At one point, “I deleted two entire pages, because it wasn’t any good,” Axel said.
Welcome to the writing life, Axel. We at WyoFile extend our deepest sympathies.
Alex, I love that you are writing! But don’t forget the math… with your imagination, you could be a great engineer and with the ability to write… very powerful and valuable! I am sure if you target the engineers in your communities to donate, you will easily raise the funds. Where do I send a check?
The world needs more Engineers!
Hi Kevin – you are right on! Education in the arts, especially creative writing, has incredible impacts on STEM education. We call it STEAM (a for arts). Any donations can be sent to Relative Theatrics c/o Play/Write, 710 E. Garfield, Laramie 82070. We appreciate the support.
One can always cut inter school sports out of budget.
Sounds like a wonderful program, for the kids, actors, and communities! And kudos to the nonprofit for keeping it alive despite the ridiculous “DEI” cuts in DC.