 | |
| Formation | 1995 |
|---|---|
| Type | Theatre group |
| Purpose | Arts education |
| Location |
|
| Website | www.yptdc.org |
Young Playwrights' Theater (YPT) is a not-for-profit theater arts-based education organization in Northwest Washington, D.C. It provides interactive in-school and after-school programs presenting and discussing student-written work to promote community dialogue and respect for young artists. [1]
Young Playwrights' Theater was founded in 1995 by Karen Zacarías. Now a Helen Hayes Award-winning Playwright-in-Residence at Arena Stage, [2] Zacarías began volunteering her time teaching playwriting workshops in DC classrooms after returning to her hometown with a M.F.A. in playwriting from Boston University. By 1997, her workshops were so successful that she incorporated YPT as a 501c3 nonprofit organization. [3]
In 2005, when Zacarías transitioned to Arena Stage, David Andrew Snider took over as Producing Artistic Director and CEO. Since then the organization has grown to employ six full-time staff members, eight professional teaching artists, and dozens of professional actors, directors and designers supporting its work on-stage and in the classroom. YPT provides thousands of students and community members annually with free in-school and after-school theater arts workshops and professional performances of student-written plays, and has created a continuum of programming at the Columbia Heights Education Campus through programming for students of Bancroft Elementary School, Lincoln Middle School and Bell Multicultural High School to gauge the long-term effects on students as they progress. [4]
Snider followed Zacarías to Arena Stage in July 2012 as Director of Artistic Programming. [5] Former Deputy Director Brigitte Pribnow Moore stepped in as Acting Executive Director and former Program Manager Nicole Jost assumed the role of Associate Artistic Director. [6] [7] YPT's staff operates out of the Josephine Butler Parks Center, adjacent to Meridian Hill Park in the Columbia Heights neighborhood and regularly stages performances at nearby Tivoli Theatre, a renovated 1920's Italian Renaissance Revival theater, now home to GALA Hispanic Theatre. The organization receives federal and private sector funding, as well as individual donations.
YPT's flagship program integrates the art of playwriting into the classroom in order to enhance student literacy, creative expression and communication. During 12 in-class workshops led by teaching artists, students explore the mechanics of language, drama, and self-expression, culminating with each student writing his or her own short play. Professional actors and directors visit the classroom throughout the process, reading students' plays and helping to bring their words to life. The most dynamic plays are chosen by a reading committee composed of professional playwrights, directors, and actors, to be performed at Tivoli Theatre by YPT's acting company in the New Play Festival and at satellite locations during the New Writers Now! series. [8] [9] The young authors work with a dramaturge to polish their scripts, attend rehearsals, and offer input to actors and a director during their plays' development and production. In 2012, YPT published some of the best student works.
Since 2008, YPT has hosted an after-school Young Playwrights' Workshop at its facilities in the Josephine Butler Parks Center, aimed at developing students' creative expression and collaboration by exploring theater as an ensemble. Students have written plays and performed them at the Capital Fringe Festival, Intersections at Atlas Performing Arts Center, the Source Festival and Tivoli Theatre. The workshop hosted arts delegations from China and Russia in 2012. [10] Several schools host YPT's After-School Playwrighting Program, providing a similar collaborative, explorative writing and performance experience. Additionally, the Summer Playwriting Series, a series of playwriting workshops for local youth, is conducted at partner schools, camps and community centers, culminating in community sharing and staged readings.
Each fall, YPT's professional acting company tours the Greater Washington, D.C. area performing student-written plays at schools, nursing homes, hospitals, community centers and theaters, free of charge. Plays are selected from the previous school year to align with an overarching theme chosen for that year's tour. Audiences participate with actors in post-performance interactive workshops to develop their own artistic interpretations and customized storytelling experiences. The tour usually concludes with a public showcase performance at Tivoli Theatre.
YPT has received commissions and enjoyed partnerships with regional and international institutions including the White House, Kennedy Center, National Geographic Society, Smithsonian Institution's Discovery Theater, Folger Shakespeare Library, Woolly Mammoth, Carnegie Institute, Theater J, Round House Theatre, African Continuum, Busboys and Poets, Washington Parks and People, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW), the Canadian Embassy, EsArtes of Suchitoto, El Salvador, and a Youth Village in Israel.
Written literacy evaluations and self-assessments are conducted during initial and final workshop visits at program sites, and assessment results are judged via a specific rubric developed by YPT's outside evaluator, faculty and staff, aimed at showing the changes in students' literacy, their abilities with language and addressing District of Columbia Public Schools and national English Language Arts Standards, as well as measurable changes in attitude/engagement in their own education. [11] [12] The President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts have called on YPT to share their successful evaluations and assessments to advance the field of arts education on a national level. [13]
YPT has received several regional and national awards, most notably the 2006 District of Columbia Mayor's Arts Award for Outstanding Contribution to Arts Education, a 2009 Helen Hayes nomination for Best New Play for Chasing George Washington: A White House Adventure, the Eugene and Agnes Meyer Foundation 2009 Exponent Award, the 2010 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award (formerly the Coming Up Taller Award), [14] the HandsOn Greater DC Cares Essence of Leadership Award in 2011 and Community Impact Award in 2012, recognition in the 2009-2010 Catalogue for Philanthropy, and most recently an honorable mention for The Washington Post 2012 Award for Excellence in Nonprofit Management. YPT is a member of the League of Washington Theaters and the Theatre Communications Group.
The Classical Theatre of Harlem (CTH) is an off-broadway professional theatre company founded in 1999 at the Harlem School for the Arts. Producing on average 2-3 productions a year as well as implementing extensive educational programming, CTH remains the only year round theatre company operating on an Actor's Equity Association LORT contract in Harlem. Its season selections present a world repertory ranging from Euripides to Derek Walcott, featuring classical and new emerging playwrights. Since its founding, CTH has put on over 40+ productions, which have received numerous AUDELCO, OBIE, Drama Desk, American Theatre Wing and Lucille Lortel nominations and awards.
Young People's Theatre (YPT) is a Canadian producer of theatre for youth and Toronto's oldest not-for-profit theatre company. Founded in 1966 by Susan Douglas Rubeš, YPT originally operated out of the now-demolished Colonnade Theatre on Bloor Street. Since its 1977-78 season, the company has resided in a renovated heritage building in downtown Toronto.
Prince Gomolvilas is a Thai American playwright. He has written many plays which have been produced in the United States and won several distinctive awards, including a PEN Center USA West Literary Award for Drama.
School of Drama at The New School is a multidisciplinary training program for theater arts, located at 151 Bank Street, and 55 West 13th Street New York City part of The New School's College of Performing Arts.
Boston Playwrights' Theatre (BPT) is a small professional theatre in Boston, Massachusetts. Led by Artistic Director Kate Snodgrass. Boston Playwrights' Theatre is the home of the Graduate Playwriting Program at Boston University. As a venue, BPT rents its space to host other New England theatre companies who are producing new plays.
The Playwrights' Center is a non-profit theatre organization focused on both supporting playwrights and promoting new plays to production at theaters across the country. It is located in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota. In October of 2020, the organization announced plans to move to a larger space in St. Paul.
The Marin Theatre Company (MTC) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and professional LORT D regional theater located in Mill Valley, California. Jasson Minadakis is the company's Artistic Director and Meredith Suttles its Managing Director / CEO.
Severino Montano was a playwright, director, actor and theater organizer with an output of one novel, 150 poems and 50 plays in his 65-year lifetime. Through the foundation of the Arena Theater, Montano institutionalized “legitimate theater” in the Philippines. Considered one of the Titans of Philippine Theater, he also have lifetime achievement award as part of National Artist of the Philippines.
Eduardo Oscar Machado is a Cuban playwright living in the United States. Notable plays by Machado include Broken Eggs, Havana is Waiting and The Cook. Many of his plays are autobiographical or deal with Cuba in some way. Machado teaches playwriting at New York University. He has served as the Artistic Director of the INTAR Theatre in New York City since 2004. He is openly gay.
Theater J is a professional theater company located in Washington, DC, founded to present works that "celebrate the distinctive urban voice and social vision that are part of the Jewish cultural legacy" as a self-mission.
The League of Washington Theatres (LOWT) is an association of non-profit professional theaters and theater-related organizations in and around the Washington, DC area. Its programs include an annual area-wide audition, Free Night of Theater, and Stages For All Ages. LOWT President David Andrew Snider, Producing Artistic Director and CEO of Young Playwrights' Theater, was elected in 2007.
Ari Roth is an American theatrical producer, playwright, director and educator. From 2014 to 2020 Roth served as the Artistic Director of Mosaic Theater Company of DC and was formerly the Artistic Director of Theater J at the Washington, D.C. Jewish Community Center from 1997 to 2014. Over 18 seasons at Theater J, he produced more than 129 productions and created festivals including “Locally Grown: Community Supported Art,” “Voices from a Changing Middle East”, and Theater J's acclaimed "Beyond The Stage" and "Artistic Director's Roundtable" series. In 2010, Roth was named as one of the Forward 50, honoring nationally prominent “men and women who are leading the American Jewish community into the 21st century.”
The School of Drama is an undergraduate and graduate theatre school in the Arts Division of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.
Barbara Schneider originally from Germany, is an American playwright.
Wendy C. Goldberg is an American theatre director and the current Artistic Director of the National Playwrights Conference at The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. Under Goldberg's tenure, The O'Neill was awarded the 2010 Regional Theatre Tony Award, the first play development and education organization to receive this honor. Goldberg is the first woman to run the Playwrights Conference and was named Artistic Director when she was just 31 years old.
The American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art Theatre (ART/МХАТ) Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University was founded in 1987 as a training ground for the new American Theater by the Robert Brustein and the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
Heather McDonald is an American playwright, director, librettist, and professor.
John Morogiello is an American playwright In residence with the Maryland State Arts Council. Since 2016, he has served as Artistic Director of Best Medicine Rep, a theater company located in Gaithersburg, Maryland that specializes in new comedies. Morogiello's work has been compared to that of British playwright Tom Stoppard. In 1996, Morogiello was named Best Up and Coming Playwright by Baltimore Magazine and was awarded a Kennedy Center Fellowship of the Americas.
Karen Zacarías is a Latina playwright who was born in Mexico in 1969. She is known for her play Mariela in the Desert. It was the winner of the National Latino Playwriting Award and a finalist for other prizes. Mariela in the Desert was debuted at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. Zacarías is the founder of the Young Playwrights' Theater located in Washington, D.C.
Tlaloc Rivas is a Mexican-American writer, producer, and theatre director. He is one of the co-founders of the Latinx Theatre Commons, which works side by side with HowlRound to revolutionize American theater and to highlight and promote the contributions and presence of Latinos in theatre. Central to Rivas' work is the Latino experience, but also exploring the American experience through the lens' of underrepresented voices. Rivas focuses on writing and directing plays that significantly explore Latino identity and history. Additionally, Rivas has also translated and adapted plays from the Spanish language and directed Spanish-language and bilingual plays such as Mariela in the Desert by Karen Zacarias and classical works such as Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña.
| General | |
|---|---|
| National libraries | |
