Writing has been Allen High School senior Anna Tjeltveit’s dream for as long as she can remember. And with her one-act play catching the attention of “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and others, her dream is closer to reality.
Tjeltveit (pronounced Chelt-vate) recently won a full four-year scholarship to Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Miranda’s alma mater, when her “Five Steps” play was selected from more than 400 submissions for the Hamilton Prize for Creativity.
“History has its eyes on ALL of you!,” Miranda — a Pulitzer Prize, Tony and Grammy winner — said in a congratulatory tweet to Tjeltveit and the two runners-up. “Have fun at @wesleyan_u and say hi to @Weswings for me!,” he added, referring to a cafe popular with students.
The Hamilton Prize has been awarded since 2016 to one high school senior whose work best reflects the qualities of the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton.” It was established to honor Miranda, who graduated from Wesleyan in 2002, and Thomas Kail, the Tony Award-winning director of “Hamilton,” who graduated from the university in 1999. Both serve as honorary chairmen for a committee of writers, actors and authors.
Calling Miranda one of her heroes, Tjeltveit said, “For him to appreciate some of the work I do is insane. It means everything to me.”
“Five Steps” is a comedy based in Greek mythology that follows characters Hades and Persephone. She described Persephone as an Instagram self-care guru-turned-life coach trying to cure Hades’ depression. The satirical piece mocks the lifestyle practices that society labels essential to happiness.
“I love the contrast between really dark characters like death and people who are really bubbly and upbeat,” Tjeltveit said. “It was sort of a logical progression to do Hades and Persephone because that’s definitely the archetypal representation of that contrast between light and dark, which would make it really comedic.”
However, “Five Steps” was not her original choice for submission. Tjeltveit said she started the summer before senior year writing the kind of deep and meaningful piece she thought the judges might like to read, then realized she wasn’t being true to herself. Hades and Persephone came to life 15 days before the deadline when Tjeltveit recovered an early plot diagram for the play, which she at first deemed “too ridiculous.”
“I’m just going to write something that’s fun for me that I can just sit on my bed and laugh about,” she decided. “Then maybe I’ll make my professors laugh and that’s all I can hope for.”
Turns out, others at Wesleyan found the play hilarious, too.
“Anna’s witty play is fun and sophisticated, showing her great promise as a creative writer. We can hardly wait to see what she does at Wesleyan,” Michael S. Roth, university president, said in a news release.
Tjeltveit said that when she received the call from Roth, she realized she had made the right choice. She also received a call from Kail, who acknowledged that sometimes a piece you write quickly and expect little from appeals to people, while something you spend two years agonizing over doesn’t.
“But you needed to go through those two years of working really hard on something else in order to get to the place where you can write the shorter thing,” he told Tjeltveit.
She attributes her ability to finish “Five Steps” in such a short time to the skills she learned through the Odyssey of the Mind creative problem-solving competition that she’s been a part of. That’s where much of her plot-writing experience comes from, the eight-minute skits she crafted for her Odyssey teammates to act out.
A self-professed “theater kid,” Tjeltveit, 18, has acted in several plays including Allen’s 2017 production of “Bonnie and Clyde” and Civic Theatre’s 2012 production of “A Christmas Carol.” Besides a long list of extracurricular activities and the novel she is writing in her free time, Tjeltveit also took six Advanced Placement classes in this school year and played varsity tennis. She was class president and National Honor Society president, as well as the founder and president of Empower Allen, an organization that promotes student involvement in politics and the community. She was also honored as the school’s valedictorian. .
She credited her AP literature teacher, Catherine Hamscher, with mentoring her through the playwriting process. And no one was more pleased than Hamscher to hear that Tjeltveit had won the scholarship.
“The fact that she’s getting that full-tuition ride takes so much stress off of her family,” Hamscher said. Now, she added, Tjeltveit can become who she was meant to be.
Her father, Alan Tjeltveit, is a psychology professor and department chairman at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. Her mother, Maria Tjeltveit, is rector at the Episcopal Church of the Mediator in Allentown. The family lives just west of downtown Allentown.
Wesleyan University was always Tjeltveit’s first choice. She applied for early decision, which locked her into Wesleyan as soon as she was accepted. Now that the cost of tuition is not a concern, she said she hopes to stay just as involved in college. She plans to take as many creative writing courses as possible and work to make her writing public. She would like to continue performing, take a beekeeping or stained glass class, and participate in activism and community service.
Although she is not sure what the future may hold, she knows her future will involve storytelling.
“I firmly believe that the reason I’m here on the planet is to be making stories,” Tjeltveit said. “It’s all about stories and worlds. If I can be doing something with that, I’m going to be happy and fulfilled.”
Morning Call reporter Ashley Stalnecker can be reached at 610-820-6647 or astalnecker@mcall.com.
