Writopia Lab’s
Worldwide Plays Festival

Founded in 2010, Writopia Lab’s Worldwide Plays Festival is an annual Off-Broadway festival of one-act plays written by playwrights ages 6 to 18 and produced, designed, directed, and acted by New York City theater professionals.

Since its inception, the festival has produced live theatrical productions of plays written in workshops at Writopia’s labs across the country and plays submitted to our competition from playwrights around the world! Comedies, musicals, monologues, historical dramas, tear-jerkers, and thought pieces—all written by the talented young playwrights of tomorrow.

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic prevented us from hosting live gatherings, Writopia Lab released the plays as 40 short podcasts. For 2021 and 2022, we continued to meet the moment with both virtual performances and socially-distanced outdoor readings of plays in Central Park, Riverside Park, and Bryant Park. This allows us all the communal experience of theater, while keeping our playwrights, artists, and audiences safe.

Worldwide Plays Festival 2023:
"Bravery MakeBelieve & Language"

Acclaimed Playwright Sarah Ruhl once wrote “Theatre is, at its roots, some very brave people mutually consenting to a make-believe world, with nothing but language to rest on.” Now in our 14th year of the Writopia Lab Worldwide Plays Festival, we want our playwrights to imbue that same sense of fearlessness and imagination into the crafting of their plays. For a playwright to create a world, whether it’s one they know or one they imagine, all they need is their words. Write deeply! Write fiercely! Write politically and personally! And don’t be afraid to write with a sense of play – they are called plays, after all.