Lights, Camera, WriteGirl!
"Stand up and shake out all these answers you've been practicing in you head, and tell me three things you hate, three you love and why they should want you and reasons I know you're human," Wayne Brady told Seth Rogen on stage, acting out a scene about two guys making their dating profiles, bringing the words written by 18-year-old Ashley to life.
"I hate vanity, liars and ignorance. I love sincerity and spontaneity mainly because I lack it ... and I'm human because I'm afraid of the dark and I cry at the end of 'The Notebook,' which I bought my mother for Christmas, I go jogging and then I drive to the nearest doughnut shop afterwards and I remember my high school awkward phase," Rogen responded, prompting laughter from the audience.
Ashley is part of WriteGirl, a non-profit that offers mentoring and writing programs to girls aged 13 to 18 to promotes creativity and self-expression to empowerment.
On Sunday night at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood, California, Seth Rogen, Wendi Mclendon-Covey, Wanye Brady, Keiko Agena, Kirby Howell-Baptiste and Stephanie Katherine Grant and a group of screenwriters including Clare Sera, Josann McGibbon and Lisa Cholodenko gathered to critique and perform scenes and monologues written girls like Ashley, as part of WriteGirl's annual fundraiser.
The event, hosted by actress and author Lauren Graham, featured 14 performances from scenes set in London in the 1800s, to an AV club at school and even a monologue from the perspective of a memorial wall, filling the audience with raw emotions and genuine laughs.
Graham, who was encouraged by former "Gilmore Girls" co-star Keiko Agena to join as a mentor last fall, immediately felt connected to the program and the girls.
"I just love what they're doing, it's so simple, it's just giving girls some to tools to express herself," Graham said. "I just think that's so powerful."
As someone who started writing at age 13 and worked as a professional writer at age 18, Rogen said he personally believes "there's no age too young to start supporting people in their creative endeavors."
"It blows my mind, I mean the quality of writing is so impressive it's both raw and sophisticated, it's what makes it so special," Agena said.
(MORE: Female directors of color finding a spotlight at Sundance)Mclendon-Covey, who acted alongside Agena in several scenes Sunday night, also joked that it was great "to see girls of this age to feel proud of something that's not their Instagram account. When you are between 13 and 18 you are just a ball of emotions, and if you have something like this you can channel all that passion into, how fabulous is that?"
When Keren Taylor, the founder of WriteGirl, was working as a singer and songwriter in New York City, she volunteered at a writing class in the Bronx.
Never underestimate the power of a girl and her pen.
At first, the students were resistant, Taylor said, but when a girl held up her paper and waved it in the air excitedly "it was an a-ha moment, for their voice and ideas being heard, and suddenly this [writing] wasn't a painful thing."
Her experience inspired her to start WriteGirl and build the organization around the motto "Never underestimate the power of a girl and her pen."
Serving 500 girls with more than 200 mentors, WriteGirl holds workshops and meetings throughout the year and help their students graduate high school and move onto college.
One of those students, Jeanine Daniels, came "kicking and screaming after her mother made her join the program," Taylor recalled.
Daniels credits her WriteGirl mentor for helping her realize opportunities she didn't even know existed, adding: "I loved writing, I loved storytelling, I didn't know it could be a job until I got to the program and met my mentor and she was a writer and I was like, 'Oh so you pay your bills doing this?'"
As a working screenwriter now, Daniels, who's written for companies including Disney and Warner Bros., had just been signed with ICM, a talent and literary agency.
Advice stars wish they had before they started their careers
With such emphasis on mentoring at the event and in the program, we asked the stars for advice they wish they'd before they entered their respective fields.
Every word you write, every page you fill, doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be done.
In the world of entertainment, "I wish I had been told to try to be as honest as you can with yourself and your interactions with other people," Keiko said, a quality that will show through your work, she added.
Graham pointed out the value of expressing oneself confidently and realizing "you don't have to be perfect out of the gate. Every word you write, every page you fill, doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be done," because it'll be a piece of work that you've accomplished. It can be fine-tuned later.
Similarly, McGibbon, the screenwriter known for "The Runaway Bride" and "The Descendants," said, "Writing is just a process of rewriting," urging those who are just starting out to remember that, ultimately, this work should be fun.
(MORE: Happy Women's History Month! Writers share their book picks by fellow women authors)Brady, a self-proclaimed loner, said it's important to find one's tribe.
"I realized in this town," he told "Good Morning America," "you need to find the people that think like you, and maybe you can create something bigger than yourself."