Playwright Residencies

It was clear from the first gathering on September 30, 2013 that this was not going to be your typical playwriting class. It was not about process, but ontology. It was specifically designed to demystify the writing process by encouraging everyone’s personal creativity.

In this installment, Mike Lew discusses the Ma-Yi Writers Lab, the fraught practice of yellow face, and what equity for people of color actually looks like.

All you have to do, for ten days, is look at beauty and create. If you need to talk your ideas through, you have a teacher available, ready to listen and help. If you want to hear your pages read aloud, supportive comrades will oblige, then drink wine with you at night to a chorus of crickets and cicadas, the only loud nightlife around.

The keynote address delivered by Todd London at the Mellon Playwright Residency Convening on September 7, 2014.

Anne Towns shares an overview of the Alliance Theatre Collision Project. 

I wrote this summer, but all channeled through the Lorca lens. Translating when you are sad, I can say, is a very good thing to do. You can experience wild creativity within very safe margins. It’s Lorca’s play. But I get to stand in his skin, and pretend. I get to leave the sad couch of my mind, and go somewhere else. Lorca is my Virgil.

Rebecca Stevens interviews playwright-poet Marcus Gardley on his impacts on the national performing arts community. 

This season, Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre will present a twentieth anniversary production of "Blues for an Alabama Sky" by playwright in residence Pearl Cleage. The Alliance premiered the play during their 1995 season.

This is the fifth in a series of blogs that chronicle the birth and infancy of People's Light & Theatre Company's (Malvern, Pennsylvania) New Play Frontiers. I will share the origins of this program, its impact on our organization in the process of selecting playwrights and community partners, as well as the discoveries we make during the residencies. Beyond reporting out, I hope this series will spark further conversation about the different motives for theaters offering playwright “residencies.”

Hayley Finn writes on the creative partnership between playwright Kira Obolensky and Artistic Director of Ten Thousand Things Michelle Hensley.

Playwrights Julie Marie Myatt and José Cruz González discuss South Coast Repertory's Dialogue/Diálogos project, which features the stories of more than 700 residents of the Santa Ana community.

Kelly Miller offers insight on how the South Coast Repertory has supported and engaged with playwrights to develop compelling theatre in Orange County. 

Isn’t boxing just like writing a play? First, you have to train (the muscles in the gym if a boxer, the mind facing the screen if a writer). Then you have to fight! (What we in the Arts call “advocate”). You go out into the world/ring and advocate for your play, and hopefully find other advocates who will advocate your “advocation.” Next, whether you win (get a production) or lose (a reading, and another reading, and another reading), you must nurse your wounds and finally, learn from the experience in hopes that you will come out next time a stronger, smarter, more creative. . .fighter.

HowlRound is working with playwright residency sites around the country to track the impact of what it means to have a playwright on staff. At each of the fourteen theaters we have a Commons Producer—a theater practitioner from the local community working with the theater and the playwright to tell the story of each residency and make the learning from this experiment accessible as it's happening. Periodically we will post these residency updates on HowlRound in the hopes that it will be useful to field-wide learning on the question of what it means to employ playwrights inside of theaters.

We've all been there. The curtain call is over, the house lights come up, and a representative from the theater comes out on stage to inform the audience that, in a few minutes, there will be a post-show discussion with the playwright. Thankfully, a partnership at Playwrights Horizons in New York City is rethinking that model. Playwright Dan LeFranc and director of New Play Development Adam Greenfield are turning the concept on its head by making the playwright the interviewer, instead of the interviewee.

I have been making apple scones / For a friend who died / Doug, my neighbor, whose last name / I don’t know

Part two of this series, curated by Aditi Kapil, playwright-in-residence at Mixed Blood Theatre, examines the pragmatics of how Radical Hospitality works, “The Financial or Business Case,” in a conversation with Managing Director Amanda White Thietje, Community Outreach & Marketing Manager Brie Jonna, and Artistic Director Jack Reuler.

Playwrights, literary managers, and artistic directors respond to Tom Horan’s questions: What is a Playwright-in-Residence and what could it be? 

Pearl Cleage writes about color-conscious casting in productions of A Christmas Carol, and the importance of representation during the holidays and beyond.

The day after the opening, I get an email from a lawyer friend who says: “Okay, Pearl, you’re the expert. Explain the second act of that play we saw last night.” I sigh and put on the coffee. My hands hover over the keys. I’m not sure what to say or how to say it. Not sure where to find the intersection of honest critique, institutional loyalty and sisterhood solidarity, I plunge in, hoping for the best.