Welcome to Script Insights! Ever wonder what goes on in the mind of a playwright? In this series, you get a rare and exciting opportunity to hear directly from the authors themselves. Each article offers personal insights from the playwright, giving you a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process, character motivations, and thematic explorations that bring their scripts to life.
Below, you’ll find a downloadable blog post offering valuable insights directly from the author of Answer Key. The downloaded PDF also includes supplemental classroom activities to help you connect the play’s themes and characters with your students.
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The Answer Key to Answer Key
Kyle Olson
I’ve found that fiction works best with an element of truth embedded in it. In the case of my play Answer Key: A High School Heist the inciting incident is based on a real event. When I was growing up, one of my friends was smart. That’s not quite a big enough word. She was, and remains, one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.
She worked hard during high school, and excelled. But at her heels was someone not quite as smart, but much more crafty. Everyone at their school knew he was a notorious cheat, everyone but the teachers, unfortunately. In the end, he managed to get just enough to beat her for Valedictorian. And for someone coming from a lower income, that means less opportunities. Her story has a happy ending, she made it into her top choice of colleges and is doing well. But that story stuck with me. And that’s when I started playing a writer’s favorite game: what if?
I’ve always been interested in heist stories: the assembling of the colorful crew, the plot twisting and turning, always staying one step ahead of the audience but not leaving them behind. And setting one during high school means that the clever twists were less important than the heightened emotions. If this story was set during college, cooler heads might have prevailed. But poorly supervised, angry teens, isolated from their communities by being at a private school? Stealing from the school might seem like a great idea.
The script got very complicated at one point, with various twists and turns as they almost got caught or had to enlist the help of more students. But I decided to pair it down, because it wasn’t about being clever, it was about staying with these young people, being angry and frustrated and scared along with them, wondering if they were going to get away with it and how bad things could get if they failed.
Answer Key is one of my favorite scripts. I hope you enjoy the adventures of Michelle and Clint and Crab and Ned just as much as I have.