By Paige Lambert

Ben Scott, of Buda, wiped tears from his eyes after watching the performance of his daughter’s play. 

While everyone was glossy eyed from her touching story, his emotions welled from his familial connection to it. 

Cari Scott, an eight-year-old writer, won the chance to see her play performed through the EmilyAnn Theatre & Gardens PLAYwrights program. 

“At first I was thinking, I’m only in second grade, why couldn’t you have picked one of the big kids,” Cari said. “But I was really excited.” 

The process toward selecting a play for the PLAYwrights program begins when members of the theatre visit second through fifth grade classrooms around Hays County. The members then hold workshops on how to write a play. A few weeks later, 10 to 15 plays are chosen from the attendees to be performed at the theatre, said artistic director Bridget Farias-Gates.

At first, Farias-Gates didn’t believe a second grader wrote the play Cari submitted. The play was hand written and sent in its own envelope.

“I thought it was a mistake because the handwriting was really advanced,” Farias-Gates said. “It was so cute and perfect, and this is a really great love story.”

Cari’s play is set in a Scottish kingdom, complete with its royal family and humble subjects. The story entails a prince who falls in love with a girl in the town and they have a daughter together. The prince’s parents, however, won’t allow the two to wed, so the baby goes to live in the palace.

The prince’s parents eventually pass away, with the daughter growing up as a princess. But the daughter never knew her mother, who worked as a baker. 

“It was hard to figure out if I should put them in or not,” Cari said. “The prince would not get married if the parents were in the story.”

When the daughter turned 16 years old, a bird began delivering letters to her. First a B, then an A, until she could spell out “bakery.” The prince and his daughter followed the cues and go to the bakery, meeting their lost loved one.

During the performance Ben realized he was watching bits of his parents’ story. 

Ben’s mother was Hispanic and his father was Scottish. His parents grew up in a time when interracial, and interclass, marriages weren’t socially acceptable, he said.

“She’s heard family members talk about how hard it was between that marriage,” Ben said. “As the play progressed, there were more and more cues that it was like their story.”

One similarity is the princess finding out her mother’s name is Marianella, which is the same name as Ben’s mother.

“My dad is very special to me, and when my family members saw my play, I hoped they would really like it and they did,” Cari said. “My whole family liked it, and he cried so that means he liked it, I guess.”

After the performance, there was still one mysterious piece to the play. When Farias-Gates received the play, it didn’t have a name and was dubbed Unknown. It wasn’t until later when Cari revealed the title of the play, “Love Letters.”

“At the very end it says there are no rules for love,” Cari said. “So that’s what I wanted to say because love is something you can do and find.”