A play by Germantown teens is the ‘ultimate toolkit’ for a brighter future

''When Tides Collide'' is an original play devised by teenagers in the Shadow Company of Yes! And…Collaborate Arts, a youth theater program based in Philadelphia. Thirteen teenaged co-authors devised and performed the play for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

The play is more than a creative enterprise. The collaboration that brought it about challenged its young creators to develop adult skills, and leave them better for it.

The young people in the program took their collective interest in mythic and dystopian fiction — including the “Hunger Games” franchise, “The Last of Us” video game, the musical “Hadestown” and the Percy Jackson fantasy novels of Rick Riordan — and folded them into their real-life concerns about climate change and divisive politics.