The only thing better than writing a play and having it performed is writing a play and having your sister in it. That is exactly what has happened to Rapid City Stevens High School student Rachel Tornquist and her older sister, Lindsay.

Lindsay is a Cornell College student who recently wrote a one-act play for the Stevens High School drama club called "The Sound of Rain" and her sister, Rachel, will play one of the characters.

"It's a dream come true," Lindsay said, during a recent phone interview. "Just talking to her every day and hearing about the process and having kids I know playing the roles - I couldn't have been happier."

Lindsay is a 2006 Stevens graduate and is attending Cornell as a theater major. As part of a playwright class, she wrote an outline for "The Sound of Rain," which is set in the 1950s and explores issues of racism.

Rachel just happened to be looking for a one-act play to do with her fellow Stevens drama club members when Lindsay told her about "The Sound of Rain."

"She fell in love with it and showed it to the drama club," Lindsay said.

Lindsay said the play is about a group of teenagers who experience normal teenage problems but also must live during a time of segregation and racism.

Rachel said the teens get mixed messages about racism and segregation from everything that surrounds them - adults, the media and other students.

"The students start out with the right idea, then hear it on the news and hear it through the adults they shouldn't be mixing," she said. "It's about starting out with the right innocence and the being blinded by it."

Lindsay said she worked with the Stevens students during the process

of fleshing out the outline of the play.

She prompted the students with questions about their lives, asking them about

times that they have been a leader, times that they felt they weren't part of the crowd.

"They'd write me personal stories, and it would somehow work its way into the show," she said. "Suddenly, the characters would take a whole new turn. It made the (Stevens students) so much more connected to the show. It's been a wonderful process."

Bill Lytle, the play's director, said it's been a unique experience for him to have the students choose an unwritten play and have them participate in the process of creating it.

"It's interesting to be involved from something that started as nothing and seeing the entire process," he said, "and as an educator, watching the kids go through that experience is very rewarding."

Lindsay said working with the students as she wrote was one of her favorite parts of writing the play.

"I said I'd love to write it for you and get you involved as much as I can," she said.

Lindsay, who hopes to go on to graduate school and earn a master's degree in fine arts for acting, hopes to continue pursuing the art of playwriting.

"Playwriting is just this whole new world to me," she said. "I've been swept off my feet with it."

Lindsay said she's hoping to travel to Sioux Falls this weekend where the Stevens club will compete with the play during the State One Act Play Festival.

"We're all really excited about it; I think people hopefully will like it," Rachel said.

Most of her nervousness will be from performing in front of her sister, not the judges.

"More than anything I want to make her proud; I know she will be," she said.

Lindsay said she's excited to be part of one of the last plays Rachel will do at Stevens; Rachel graduates in May.

"It's been amazing to have her in it," she said. "To have it be my little sister - and one of my best friends, to have her be so in love with the show and her senior year and one of her last shows."

Contact Kayla Gahagan at 394-8410 or kayla.gahagan@rapidcityjournal.com