|
Dear Friends,
The received wisdom today is that live theater is in trouble. In fact, this is only partly true. Commercial theater is doing quite well, as box office grosses on Broadway indicate. Musicals, revivals, and musical revivals thrive. What is in trouble is the individual voice, the voice of the playwright who cannot be heard above the din of amplified extravaganzas and praise of things past. Many playwrights have become so disenchanted that they have departed for the greener, if less nourishing, fields of movies and television. New writers have to be encouraged to replace them. That's where the Young Playwrights Festival comes in.
The Young Playwrights Festival is something I got rolling twenty years ago and it's turned out to be extraordinary, as this site will attest. We get between 600 and 1200 submissions each year from young writers 18 and under, and from all fifty states. More surprising (and encouraging) is the fact that there are always entries talented enough to more than justify the cost of mounting them. Besides staging professional productions of the winning plays, we send experienced playwrights into schools to teach and stimulate the students to express themselves theatrically. We are seeding not only a body of future work but future audiences as well.
As we enter the era of market-research musicals and the destruction of government support for the individual artists, efforts like Young Playwrights Festival become even more important to the creative health of the country and, in particular, the theater. Our budget this year is $700,000. Please help us out. If freshness and individuality are not encouraged, the theater will soon be a wasteland of groaning resuscitations and calculated blockbusters, and the passionate voices of the young will be stilled forever.
Thanks for whatever you can do.
|
|
