PlayPenn’s 2009 Conference marked the 5th year that PlayPenn has offered resources to American playwrights in the interest of helping them to bring their work closer to production readiness. Since our inception in 2005 when we invited four playwrights to the conference – Sheila Callaghan, Jordan Harrison, J.T. Rogers, and Lydia Stryk – to this year when we were able to invite six playwrights and give rehearsed readings to two others, PlayPenn has evolved into a development conference ever-sensitive to the needs of the playwright. We are proud of and grateful to over 80 artists who joined us this year and over one thousand members of the Philadelphia community and the national professional theatre community who came out to appreciate the results of the work that was accomplished during the two-and-a-half weeks of the conference. Finally, without a committed community of supporters, both individual and institutional, there would be no PlayPenn and the theatre community - locally, regionally and nationally - would be all the poorer.
WHAT
IS PLAYPENN?
PlayPenn is an annual conference for the development of new plays, the
advancement of new voices in the theatre both locally and nationally,
and the cross-fertilization of writers, directors, dramaturgs and actors.
PlayPenn
gives time and attention to playwrights from around the nation whose
work is poised for a developmental workshop environment. Each summer
PlayPenn hosts a two-week conference, inviting playwrights to develop
new plays in a collaborative workshop environment. In order to encourage
active revision and rewriting during the period of the conference, PlayPenn
provides professional actors, directors and dramaturgs with space, technical
and administrative resources and ample time to use them. The process
culminates in a series of staged readings to be presented to members
of the local, regional and national professional theatre communities
and to the community at large.
PlayPenn
is a new play development conference. The goal of the
conference is the development of plays, through a process of collaboration,
experimentation, rehearsal and rewriting rather than fully realized
productions of finished works. By focusing on playwrights’ needs
PlayPenn makes the fundamental work of the theatre possible without
the constraints and pressures of production, promotion and commercial
consideration.
By
providing a laboratory and the necessary tools for playwrights that
has the potential to lead to the most progressive and substantive results
for playwrights’ work, PlayPenn’s process is helping to
develop the next generation of playwrights for Philadelphia, the region
and the nation.
