Evanston Township High School Grad Wins College Theater Award

EVANSTON, IL — An Evanston native recently received a playwriting award from Knox College.

Greta Eanes, an Evanston Township High School graduate who majored in creative writing, was one of about 250 seniors who graduated this month from the Galesburg college.

Eanes, 22, received the second-place Davenport Literary Award in Playwriting from the Knox College Theatre Department at the end of the 2020-21 school year for a script called "Full Vision," according to school officials.

"'Full Vision' was the piece that I worked the hardest on of my college creative writing pieces, so I was hopeful I might get mentioned. It was really gratifying and exciting to hear that I had won second place," Eanes told Patch in an email. "Maren Robinson, the Chicago dramaturg who presented the awards was quite complimentary of the piece, and I'm flattered by the response.

Sherwood Kiraly, visiting instructor in English and Theatre and writer-in-residence at the college, said Eanes demonstrated a great ear for dialogue in the piece.

"That Davenport Award recognition confirmed what many of us at Knox have been finding out about this writer: Greta’s got game," Kiraly said in a message.

The instructor said Eanes' "Full Vision" developed from a workshop last fall where students adapted a piece of fiction that they had written into a screenplay.

"What impressed me most about Greta’s script then was that it had a fairy-tale underpinning but was centered in contemporary character and real-world issues — a unique balance which gave it powerful emotional impact," Kiraly said.

The story of "Full Vision" involves two friends who crawl under a hedge and into a fantastic world involving the undead, clay kings and castles of golden glass, according to a summary provided by the college. The two friends, Ollie and Jess, struggle with growing up without each other in the real world.

"By chance they both meet up for a block party on their old street and have to reckon with the promises that they broke, the life they once led, and the fact that years again, in another land, they were married," according to a summary provided by the college.

The annual Knox College awards highlight excellence in various forms of creative writing, with rotating outside judges.

Robinson, the Chicago-based dramaturg, judged the playwriting category this year, which included 16 submissions, according to Kiraly.

Kiraly agreed with Robinson's description of Eanes' script as "heartwarming without being saccharine" as it "managed to navigate the tropes of the children who visit (a) magical world and the tropes of a coming out story without falling into cliché."

Eanes' visual art work has also been recognized, with a Gold Key in drawing from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards program while at ETHS and the Al Young Painting award during freshman year at Knox.

This fall, Eanes plans to pursue a master's degree in Museum Studies from the University of Missouri at St. Louis.

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