Jonathan E. Mayer '10

Choosing courses, comping the Crimson, parties in the Yard: these are the typical concerns of Harvard first-years during their first few weeks in Cambridge. One member of the class of 2010, though, has a little bit more to think about than shopping week and which extracurricular clubs to join.

Jonathan E. Mayer ’10 is hardly a normal college freshman—even at Harvard. Mayer was recently selected for his playwriting skills from over 200 entries as the winner of the 2006 VSA Arts Playwright Discovery Award, a 22-year-old national writing contest that promotes plays focused on the role of disability in society today.

In addition to receiving a monetary award, Mayer will have the honor of seeing his one-act drama, “Mistakes, Inc.,” produced at the Kennedy Center’s Family Theater. Sporting a professional cast and director (Paul-Douglas Michnewicz), “Mistakes, Inc.” debuted yesterday.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Mayer’s success is his relative inexperience. The Orlando native started writing at an early age. “When I was seven or eight, I liked Star Wars,” he says. “So I wrote like a little page TV series that I’d enact with my brother and my dad.” In high school, Mayer began collaborating with his older brother on an as-yet-unpublished movie script “for fun” during summer vacations. Yet Mayer had no history of participation in formal playwriting competitions before entering the VSA Arts contest.

In fact, Mayer’s scriptwriting ability was informed not so much by writing experience as it was by childhood experiences of illness. “When I was about five or six, I had severe asthma attacks,” he says. Despite his “near-fatal” condition—Mayer lost part of his lung during that period—he looks at his childhood of hospital visits and medical tests in a positive light, saying that it has spurred his interest in a medical career, possibly as a pulmonologist.

His asthma also provided ample creative material for Mayer. His experience of illness and storytelling ability collide in “Mistakes, Inc,” which centers around a fictional company that provides a mistake-erasing service to its customers. When a high school journalist begins to investigate the eccentric owner of Mistakes, Inc., the ensuing drama questions the necessity of erasing one’s mistakes and suggests the value of imperfection.

So how is the author of such a play dealing with life at Harvard, one of the global epicenters of Type-A perfectionism?

“Well, I guess I take it one thing at a time,” answers Mayer with a grin. If anything, life is even more hectic for Mayer than for his overachieving classmates. In addition to pre-med orientation meetings and Life Sciences classes, Mayer is conducting telephone conferences with Michnewicz to go over last-minute edits on the script, and he will be flown down to Washington D.C. for the play’s premiere.

Despite the hubbub, Mayer seems remarkably laid-back, expressing few qualms about the realization of his script on-stage. “[The director is] a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, so I trust him,” said Mayer. (In addition to directing VSA productions, Michnewicz is also the co-founder of Theater Alliance, a small but well-renowned Washington theater company.) “I’ve liked his suggestions, and I’m just happy it’s being produced.”

—Staff writer Mary A. Brazelton can be reached mbrazelt@fas.harvard.edu.