Get Involved at Boston Playwrights' Theatre

Graduate Playwriting Program:
As part of the famous Graduate Creative Writing program at Boston University, we help shape the next generation of playwrights. Most students attend this M.A. program with partial or full scholarships. Students' works are workshopped throughout the year. To help playwrights hone their craft and to bring their plays to life, we let them see their work on stage, and we hire the finest professional actors for each class.

Our Annual Season of New Plays:
Each year we are committed to bringing you new plays in the highest quality productions, using the best of local talent. These productions are invaluable to our playwrights ur history of awards clearly demonstrates this, including a 2003 NETC Regional Award for "Outstanding Achievement in the American Theatre." We produce three new plays a year written by our alumni. In our two professional shows, we hire the best actors, directors, and technical staff in the Boston area. Our one "academic" show is entered in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Working under the name of "Playwrights Theatre at Boston University," we produce one of our most recent graduate's plays in collaboration with The College of Fine Arts Theatre Department and their current faculty and MFA students in Acting, Directing, and Production (along with some professionals).

Theatre Space Donation:
We promote the production of new plays by other theatre companies through the donation of our theatre spaces. Each year, each of our two theatre spaces are used by other theatre companies who are taking a financial risk on a new play. Donated space significantly lowers their initial investment costs. This free venue can be crucial in the decision to produce a new work, as it allows theatre companies to take a chance with a piece that has artistic merit, but is as yet unknown to the public.

The Boston Theater Marathon:
Boston Playwrights' Theatre organizes and runs this award-winning all-day marathon of new ten minute plays. The 50 ten-minute plays are chosen each year from over 300 entries by New England playwrights. The winning plays are produced by 50 local theatre companies who donate their time to this event. Generously supported over the years by the Humanities Foundation at Boston University and now by the Huntington Theatre Company by the loan of their larger venue in the Stanford Calderwood Theatre Pavilion, the BTM gives its entire net proceeds to the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund, a non-profit charitable organization helping theatre companies and artists in crisis (medical and otherwise).

Beyond raising money for charity, this festival was started to promote new playwrights and match them with local theatre companies, introducing patrons to the diversity of the Boston theatre scene and providing a showcase for the excellent local acting and directing talent and encouraging collaboration in our theatre community. In 2002 the BTM was given a special Elliot Norton Award for "enlivening local theatre."

Massachusetts Young Playwrights' Festival:
This festival, now in its third year, and supported, again in part, by the generosity of the Humanities Foundation at Boston University, introduces high school students to playwriting through a workshopping process very similar to our Graduate Program. We send our playwriting mentors into six high schools to talk about the value of and the making of short plays--and then the writing begins. In April, all these students come together on one day to celebrate their newly formed works with staged readings by professional actors and directors. It's a wonderful day of festivities, and these new works are an invaluable source of inspiration for all of us.

Sister City Program:
Sister City is a pilot project to promote regional playwrights around the country in theatres located in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, New York and others. All of these cities have talented writers who do tremendously well in their region, but have trouble moving up to the next level. The goal is to have a national network to help these artists make that leap. The Sister City network works to coordinate residencies, co-commission new work, and help funders, critics, and the public better understand and support the process of creating new theater works. Every year BPT sends one of our alums to a Sister City, and a new playwright comes to Boston. So far, we've helped writers from Atlanta and Austin, TX, and we look forward this year to another gifted writer returning for our First Stages Reading Series in the spring. Join us!