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Company type | Non-profit |
---|---|
Industry | Theatre |
Founded | 1971 |
Headquarters | Minneapolis, Minnesota |
Number of employees | 13 (2012) |
Website | pwcenter |
Playwrights' Center is a non-profit theatre organization focused on both supporting playwrights and promoting new plays to production at theaters. 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. [1]
Playwrights' Center was founded in 1971 by a group of University of Minnesota undergraduate and graduate students, including Greg Almquist, Erik Brogger, Tom Dunn, Barbara Field, Gar Hildenbrand, and Jon Jackoway. These playwrights conceived of the Playwrights' Center (initially called the Minnesota Playwriting Laboratory) as a place where writers could hear their work read aloud by professional actors, criticized from peers and audience members, and to develop their scripts collaboratively.
After becoming a not-for-profit company in 1973, the founders held a series of play readings, discussion series, and one-acts performed at various venues in the Twin Cities. [2] In 1979, the center moved into the Olivet Lutheran Church in south Minneapolis, which remains its home today. [3] [4]
Jeremy Cohen serves as the producing artistic director, [5] and the center is further supported by a full staff, an eighteen-member board of directors and a national advisory board of theater professionals. Members of the Playwrights' Center include artists such as August Wilson, Lee Blessing, Ping Chong, Paula Vogel, Jeffrey Hatcher, Suzan-Lori Parks, Jordan Harrison, Carlyle Brown, Craig Lucas, Melanie Marnich, and Kira Obolensky.[ citation needed ]
Recent partners have included Tectonic Theater Project, Mixed Blood Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Public Theater (NY), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ten Thousand Things Theater Company, Berkeley Rep, Marin Theatre Company, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and others. The Center also collaborates with local cultural institutions as the Walker Art Center and Minnesota History Center to develop theater that deepens their programming.[ citation needed ]
The Ruth Easton New Play Series [6] gives selected Core Writers 20 hours with collaborators to workshop their script. Each year, a handful of plays are selected from the Core Writers for development in The Ruth Easton Series. With funding from the Ruth Easton Lab, the plays receive a director, a designer and, if the playwright chooses, a free two public readings of the plays.
Each term is three years; Core Writers may re-apply for additional terms. [7]
Schools participating in the New Plays on Campus program may nominate students to become Playwrights’ Center Core Apprentices. In partnership with the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, the Core Apprentice program provides student playwrights with a professional playwright and a workshop of a new play at the Playwrights’ Center. Five student playwrights are selected each year to be “Core Apprentices”. [8] [9]
PlayLabs is an annual new play festival that occurs during a two-week span in October. Each playwright is paired with a director, designer, and cast of actors. The selected plays receive 30 hours of rehearsal and two readings with allocated writing and revision time. All readings are free. The festival extends to a Jerome Fellows showcase, a panel discussion, and a festival celebration. [10] According to The Playwrights' Center 2005 annual report, 74 percent of Playlabs playwrights go on to receive professional productions or further development opportunities. [11]
The Many Voices Fellowship was created in 1994 in partnership with the Jerome Foundation in order to create a home for early-career playwrights of color. Since that time, the Many Voices program has provided 140 fellowships for some 100 emerging playwrights of color, offering class instruction, play development workshops, and mentoring opportunities.
May Lee-Yang, also known as May Lee, is a Hmong American playwright, poet, prose writer, performance artist and community activist in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. She was born in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand and moved to Minnesota as a child with her family. She is also the executive director of the non-profit organization Hmong Arts Connection.
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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, and in 2017 he was given the DC Mayor's Arts Award for Visionary Leadership. In 2021, Roth launched a new partnership with A. Lorraine Robinson, founding Voices Festival Productions, to be the new home for his long-running "Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival." Their first public event was a virtual benefit in support of "Ukrainian Playwrights Under Siege" in partnership with the Arts Club of Washington.
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