INPERSON
All the
World’s
Her Stage
North Allegheny teen
Mehrnaz Tiv wins playwriting contest.
BY JENNIFER BROZAK
A
t just 17 years old, Ingomar’s
Mehrnaz Tiv already has the
award-winning credits to rival any
accomplished writer.
A senior at North Allegheny High School,
Mehrnaz has been named a winner in the
City Theatre Young Playwrights Contest. She
was one of six students selected as a finalist
in the annual contest for her play, “Inbox
Full.” The winning plays were selected from
more than 300 submissions written by local
middle and high school students.
Mehrnaz and the other winners will
collaborate with professional theater artists
this fall to produce their plays on the City
Theatre’s Hamburg Studio stage during the
17th Annual Young Playwrights festival,
which will take place Nov. 30 through Dec. 9.
“This is the first time I will actually see a
piece of my work performed,” says Mehrnaz.
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“This process will be a great experience for
future projects. It is very exciting!”
The idea for “Inbox Full” came from
her experience living in a neighborhood
of townhouses that shared a community
mailbox, with slots for each resident.
“Mail got mixed up all the time, but
everyone always returned it to its rightful
owner,” she explains. “In this play, I explore
what would happen if personal interest
caused people not to be so obliged to do the
right thing.”
Mehrnaz, who was born in Tehran, Iran,
has been performing in theater and musical
theater since the fifth grade. She’s written
numerous scripts and plays and also enjoys
working on poems and personal essays.
“Expressing a story to a live audience was
something I always found intriguing. Having
the ability to make an audience feel a certain
emotion, whether it be lighthearted or
serious, is very interesting,” she says.
This isn’t the first time Mehrnaz is being
recognized for her writing talent; she’s
received a Gold Medal from the Scholastic
Art and Writing Awards for her play “Irma”
and won the “Best of the Best” McGough
Memorial Award in the Ligonier Valley
Writers Poetry Contest for her poem
“Maternal Lament.” For two years in a row,
she won second place in the Screenwriting
Category of the Ralph Munn creative writing
contest, which is part of the Carnegie
Library’s Teen Media Awards, for her scripts
“Iris” and “Modern Antique.”
She finds writing for a live audience
challenging.
“Having an audience means they don’t
only hear what is happening, but they also