Moses Lake playwright's other job? High school

MOSES LAKE - Anyone who missed Moses Lake High School's performances of "Jack" or "The Big Rock Candy Mountains" missed the two best plays ever written.

That's according to Moses Lake High School sophomore Jeff Ames, who has a right to the superlatives: He wrote them both.

The musical "The Big Rock Candy Mountains" was performed Saturday. Murder mystery "Jack" was put on as dinner theater in January.

Ames said he has been writing for a long time.

"I just wrote little stories when I was like in fifth grade," he said. "They weren't very good. I found a couple of them and they're kind of silly."

Ames isn't certain where ideas for the plays came from.

"They just sprouted out of places," he said.

Ames enjoyed watching his words put on the stage.

"It's really cool, especially seeing all these really beautiful flats and stuff being painted," he said while on stage for "The Big Rock Candy Mountains." "It's really weird, seeing it all just go up there."

Is he working on other things as his plays are produced?

"School," he said.

Writing-wise, he has other plays in mind.

"But I can't start writing those until this one's done," he said Wednesday afternoon while hard at work on "The Big Rock Candy Mountains."

Ames conceded pursuing a career as playwriting would be "cool." He'd like to be an English teacher as well.

"Something that involves writing or music," he said.

Ames also wrote most of the music for the musical. He has been in band for more than four years, playing the bass clarinet, tuba, French horn, the trombone and the piano.

"Since the sixth grade," he said.

A lifelong resident of Moses Lake, Ames believes the people close to him have had an influence on his writing.

With the first two plays, Ames said he tried to put "really important messages" into his plays.

"But I also want it to be really funny," he said. "Because I don't really like things that aren't that funny, that are too serious."

"The Big Rock Candy Mountains" was the second play of Ames' that performer Isaac Jensen was in.

"It's actually pretty cool, because you don't spend any time, 'Oh, I think the writer wanted this,'" Jensen, a sophomore, said. "It's like, the writer's right there to tell you this is how it should be done. So it's nice in a lot of ways."

High school junior Mercedez Serrano played the bearded woman and the farmer in the musical.

"Well, Jeff's like my best friend, so it's really awesome to be in his work of art," she said prior to the performance on Saturday.

Serrano hoped people would attend the musical "because it's just an amazing play."

What makes it amazing?

"Jeff wrote it," she said with a laugh.

Ames said he would like to continue in the high school's theater program, and he has another musical he hopes to try and get produced.

"It's kind of almost done, just not entirely written," he said. "But I want to try and get that next year."

Is there anything else Ames would like people to know about him?

"I'm really neat," he said. "Really nice, good looking."