Summer Blog Series: New Boston Companies To Make Playwrights Swoon #1

Hello Boston,

We don’t know if you’ve heard, but Playwrights’ Commons has launched! As a playwright development organization, our mission is to strengthen the local theatre ecology through workshops, fiscal support, and innovative collaborative opportunities. We love New England, and we love our artists; we aim to be that really great friend who somehow manages to offer dead-on advice and knows when to buy you a strong drink. 

We’re ramping up steadily over the next few months, so be on the look-out for upcoming programs like the Donut Hole lab (if you’re feeling like you’re somewhere between “emerging” and “established,” this lab might be for you); workshops on how to build one’s artistic brand, and on using new social media platforms; and master classes with talented theatre leaders from near and far. A recent poll of local playwrights revealed a strong desire for programs that help individual artists make stronger, more useful connections to the field and to producing organizations – we’re working on developing a series to address these concerns.

Hughes and Lazzaro selected for Playwrights' Commons retreat

Hughes

Alums Colleen Hughes and Emily K. Lazzaro have been selected to participate in Playwrights’ Commons’ Freedom Art Theatre Retreat in August! This dynamic duo will be joined by a number of area theatre artists (including other BU alums), in a program led by Associate Professor and Playwrights' Commons Founder Ilana Brownstein. See the full list of participants here. 

Congrats guys – this is terrific!

Lazzaro

About the Retreat

Emerging Boston-area playwrights, designers, and dramaturgs, matched into creative teams together, and taken to a bucolic, peaceful, woodsy New England retreat for a week.  While there, the creative teams would be tasked with brainstorming and writing/designing/devising theatrical projects that would have been impossible to conceive of as individual artists. 

About Playwrights’ Commons

Playwrights’ Commons is a nascent playwright development (not play development) organization whose mission is to strengthen the Boston-area theatre ecology through innovative laboratories, workshops, collaborative opportunities, and fiscal sponsorships of local artists. 

Playwrights’ Commons seeks to provide dramaturgical support to writers at all stages of their careers, with a special focus on deepening the opportunities for artists who hope to put down professional roots in Boston and surrounding cities.

Playwrights' Commons: A New Development Organization Launches in Boston

Another exciting opportunity for playwrights in Boston! Ilana Brownstein, professor of theatre at BU, former dramaturg at the Huntington Theatre, and, in general, a champion for playwrights and new plays, has launched a new development organization to service New England playwrights. It's called Playwrights' Commons. Another development opportunity? It's more than that. Personally, as a playwright, I think one of the cool things about it is that it's focused on the development of the playwright (the person) in new creative ways, not a development opportunity that seeks to "fix" our "broken" plays.

Here's the mission statement: "Playwrights’ Commons is a nascent playwright development (not play development) organization whose mission is to strengthen the Boston-area theatre ecology through innovative laboratories, workshops, collaborative opportunities, and fiscal sponsorships of emerging artists. Playwrights’ Commons seeks to provide dramaturgical support to writers at all stages of their careers, with a special focus on deepening the opportunities for artists who hope to put down professional roots in Boston and surrounding cities." Check out the website for more details AND, for information on how to apply for the Freedom Art Theatre Retreat this summer. Follow Playwrights Commons on Twitter @PwritesCom and on Facebook.