There are many good reasons for you to grab your checkbook and support Young Playwrights Inc.’s 25th Anniversary season; if you want those, along with directions on how to get your check to YPI, click here. For a story about our youth and the future of the American theater, keep reading.

It’s a steamy day in August – the type that makes New Yorkers run for the hills (or the Hamptons), but not one of the writers at a corner table in a West Village cafe has a single complaint about being here. In fact, several admit that winning YPI’s National Playwriting Competition and coming to New York for our Writers Conference was a lifelong aspiration. The oldest of the four men and five women is just 19, so there's never been a time in their lives when there wasn't a Young Playwrights Inc. – i.e.: a unique opportunity for young writers to see their work taken seriously. 

This particular gathering of writers is one of the rituals that marks the coming of age of a dramatist of their generation, and the recognition is important; after all, only nine rose to the top in a pool of 1,000 writers vying for those coveted spots. In the space of a week they’ve had master classes, been to the theater on a daily basis, and collaborated with professional theater artists (nearly 100 took part in the process) to transform their prize-winning plays into compelling public readings; today, we toast their success with iced tea and sodas.

The writers are wistful, talking about the ‘incredible experience’ they've just had. I have my own soft-focus visions of these writer-kids: watching them rush Tony Kushner in a theater lobby as if he were a rock star; seeing them in the teenage equivalent of formal wear eating Chinese takeout on Alfred Uhry's living room rug; the clamor for stories about those who’ve been to the YPI table before them: Rebecca Gilman, Jonathan Sherman, Madeleine George, Kenny Lonergan; their exhausted faces the morning after an all-night rewrite session – well, they are here to work. Now they prepare to return to quiet rooms around the country, amazed at having found people who share their passion and surprised to realize that in this company they're more than theater geeks or writing nerds.

If you put the story of this day together with those of the other 364 YPI days, you have the chronicle of a vital theater company that reaches 10,000 young people and hundreds of teachers nationwide through nine professional and educational programs which also include the Young Playwrights Festival’s Off Broadway season, Write A Play! workshops for students, and the Teacher Training Institute – and does it all with a budget of under $1 million.

If you support the arts, especially if you support other theaters, you need to support Young Playwrights Inc. This is where America’s newest playwrights are found and nurtured, where a generation is introduced to the theater at its best, and where older generations of professional directors, designers, and actors are reminded of the joy they felt when they first discovered the theater. Please renew your support now and give as generously as you can. 

Sincerely,

Sheri M. Goldhirsch
Artistic Director