What happens when a professional theater company produces 45 plays written by young playwrights?
See how the New York Times, NY1, The Huffington Post, and other major outlets answer that question!
2011 Writopia Lab's Best Playwrights' Festival, sponsored by David Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants, is a week-long off-Broadway presentation of plays by award-winning writers in grades 1 through 12. Though these plays are written by young writers, they are for all of us, young or old.
The plays presented in the first five days of the Festival were developed in workshops at Writopia Lab. Sunday’s plays, though, went through an entirely different process. Thanks to the grant we received from Worldwide Pants, we were able to launch the playwriting competition we had long dreamed of. Our competition was open to playwrights in grades one through 12 from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. With only six weeks’ notice, young writers submitted 115 plays, screenplays, and monologues.
After this three-round judging process, we selected nine winning pieces to produce as part of this Festival. It was difficult to make the final cuts—our judges were deeply moved by so much of the work that was submitted, and there were many deserving pieces. Congratulations to all who were chosen to be recognized at this exciting event!
Highlights
- Hiphop artist Stalley, recently signed to Warner Music, will be performing a "Writopia Poetry Mash Up" on closing night!
- Our playwrights include 2011 Scholastic Awards' National Gold Medalists, and the top winners of several other prestegious competitions.
- Our directors include: Terry Berliner (resident director of The Lion King); Kevin R. Free (One of the NYTheatre.com 15 people of 2010, because of his “outstanding and noteworthy contributions to the New York theatre scene.”)
For the first time, Writopia has opened the festival to writers beyond Writopia throughout the tri-state area. Writopia received 115 submissions and has chosen seven pieces to produce on Sunday, 5/22, the last day of the festival. At the culmination of this event, we will hold an award ceremony at which we will recognize those seven winners and the 12 runners up, and host a panel discussion where you will be able to ask established playwrights (including Chris Shinn and Bekah Brunstetter) your own questions.
Winners and runners up were notified via email on April 29th, and will be listed on our website soon. All playwrights will receive notification and critiques of their plays within the next week.
2011 Playwrights' Festival Theater Company
Led by Artistic Director Dan Kitrosser, the 2011 Playwrights' Festival Theater Company includes well-known directors, including the Lion King's Terry Berlin, as well as professional actors and designers.
What is Writopia Lab?
Writopia Lab is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded in New York City in April of 2007. We run creative writing workshops for kids ages 8 to 18. All of our workshops have a maximum of six students and are led by a published writer who has been fully trained in our time-tested methodology. In each of the past three years, more kids from Writopia Lab have been recognized on both the regional and national levels by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards than from any other school in the nation. Also, in 2008, 2009, and 2010 our students have won multiple "Best Play" awards from Stephen Sondheim's Write A Play! festival.
If you have any questions, please email or call us at (212) 222-4088.
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Early Press
The Huffington Post describes one of our playwrights as "reminiscent of a young Samuel Beckett or Edward Albee... and there is one fact about this New Yorker that makes his wisdom so surprising: he is 14."
See what the New York Times had to say about last year's 2011 Playwrights' Festival!
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