Collegiate grad and Kennedy Center playwriting winner raising money for web series

Talk to Micah Watson for 30 minutes and you’ll either say aloud or think “Wow” at least 25 times.

Remember her name because one day when you’re watching movie credits roll by you’ll probably see her name. Maybe she was the screen writer or the director or the producer or all of the above.

Micah is a 23-year-old graduate student at New York University. Her family moved to Wichita when she was 11 years old. She graduated from Collegiate, then from the University of Virginia. Her parents, Gidget and C. Edward Watson, have plenty of reasons to be proud of her. The feeling is mutual. “They are my heroes,” she said.

Before heading to the Big Apple she was awarded the Kennedy Center Undergraduate Playwriting Award for her play, “Canaan.” She has a shelf full of awards, but says this one was very special. It was a good send off to grad school and to New York where she lives in mid-town.

“My whole apartment is about the size of a large dorm room, but it is convenient. It’s 15 minutes to school,” she said.

Two minutes into the interview I realized I should be taking notes on my lap top. Micah talks 90 miles an hour.

“I’ve been told I talk fast. I can slow down,” she said with a laugh. “I think my mouth is trying to keep up with my brain.”

And you can bet her brain is in over-drive most of the time and always has been.

It all started with ballet. She says she loved to dance, but what she enjoyed the most was the creativity involved and all the action backstage that went into a production.

Years later when she was part of the project of writing and producing a play in 24 hours, she knew she was hooked.

“I got to be a writer and I loved it,” she said. “It was such a challenge and so much fun.”

A common interview question is, “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?” For Micah, I asked the same question, except changed it to five years. She seems to be on an accomplishment fast track.

Without hesitation she said, “Well, I hope to have directed and released a feature film. Yes, I would want to write it. And I also would like to have written and produced a play for off-Broadway or Broadway.”

What about television?

“I would love to write for TV. Actually I’m writing a web series now. It’s called “Black Enough” and it will have 13 episodes. It’s about an insecure dancer who goes to college. It is a comedy and a drama and deals with what it means to be an outsider.”

She says one thing she has learned is that collaboration is a good thing. If it’s good when I do it, it’s great if creative minds work together.

Those involved in the web series are doing crowd funding. Micah was happy to report it’s going well and that some good support has come from Wichita. “Wichita is great. You can’t get that generosity everywhere,” she said.

She has a deep faith in God and says sometimes she has to pause and be aware of her many blessings. She’s thankful for her parents and younger siblings, sister, Hanna, who is a college student and poet, and brother Malachi, who is in high school and is part of the Music Theatre Wichita Teen Choir.

“It’s a fun household,” Micah said.

Since much of her writing is about events that happened before she was born, Micah says she learns and creates her characters by listening to those who were there.

“It’s important as a writer to listen.” For “Canaan” she listened to people who could reflect on the events following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. In the play the main character, a young boy, tries to figure out where he fits in the civil rights movement.

Micah’s enthusiasm is contagious; her energy, refreshing. When asked if she ever went back and read her early work, she laughed and said she had.

“I could see I had grown in my craft and as a person,” she said.

Our time was up so off she went. As she drove away I thought to myself, ‘there’s goes a young lady who is going to go far. Wow.’