The Playwrights Realm Reveals Third Annual Round of Script Share, Offering Free Professional Guidance to Aspiring Playwrights

The Playwrights Realm will present its third annual Script Share, an initiative that provides individuals without access to institutional support for their craft an opportunity to have an engaging, open session about their play with a theater professional. Script Share is part of the company's Aspiring Playwrights program, which provides free services to those starting out in the field; playwrights will be selected for this free opportunity from an open lottery, Oct 10–23.

 

Script Share was conceived by The Realm's Associate Artistic Director Alexis Williams and General Manager and Associate Producer Céline Delcayre, in recognition of the fact that access to crucial guidance is particularly limited at the very beginning of a writer's engagement with the craft.

 

Script Share brings aspiring playwrights into dialogue with dramaturgs, literary managers, directors, and many other professionals working in new play development. Their conversations last one hour, and surround a particular script submitted by the playwright. They are driven by what the writer is hoping to explore, and aim to provide an initial response, perspective, and guidance around the craft of playwriting, and further questions, rather than critical feedback.

 

Script Share was introduced in 2021 while much of what was happening in the field was still virtual. It remains an online program, enabling it to reach aspiring playwrights across the country, as well as internationally—and continuing to expand The Realm's supportive community beyond the limits of proximity.

 

As Script Share seeks to help aspiring writers by demystifying the professional theater landscape, Aspiring Playwrights also offers a digital library of free online articles and filmed classes covering the basics of playwriting—as both a craft and profession. A program that never requires applications, Aspiring Playwrights is free and open to anyone interested in writing for the stage.

 

The Script Share announcement comes as The Playwrights Realm simultaneously presents its first production since 2019: Emma Horwitz's Off-Broadway debut Mary Gets Hers, directed by Josiah Davis. The completely sold-out run has garnered considerable critical acclaim for the emerging playwright, earning a New York Times Critic's Pick review, with Horwitz also named as one of “Four Theater Artists to Watch This Fall” by the publication.

 

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS REALM

 

The Playwrights Realm, led by Founding Artistic Director Katherine Kovner and Executive Director Roberta Pereira, is devoted to supporting emerging playwrights throughout their careers, helping them to hone their craft, fully realize their vision, and build meaningful artistic careers. To serve this mission, The Playwrights Realm provides comprehensive support to playwrights throughout their creative processes and careers with the Realm Playwrights Program, Writing Fellowship, the Scratchpad Series, and the Page One Residency.

 

Balancing the presentation of new work with a dedication to serving playwrights' needs, The Realm has implemented programs to counteract industry gatekeeping and illuminate, for people interested in theater, clear pathways into the field: they inaugurated the Aspiring Playwrights program (a curriculum of free online articles, videos, and services created in conjunction with the organization's family of artists), and began Script Share (an opportunity for aspiring writers to engage in a one-hour discussion with a theater professional about a particular script). These initiatives followed another vital means of support The Realm launched in 2019: the Radical Parent-Inclusion Project (RPI), developed in association with Parent Artist Advocacy League for the Performing Arts (PAAL), which seeks to dismantle the barriers preventing parent-artists from succeeding in the theater by illuminating, creating, and tracking new pathways of access and approaches to production.

 

The Playwrights Realm recently opened their first production since 2019, Emma Horwitz's Mary Gets Hers, “a spiky and adventurous retelling of the medieval devotional play Abraham, or the Rise and Repentance of Mary” (Rhoda Feng, The New York Times, in a Critic's Pick review) directed by Josiah Davis. In the fall of 2016, The Playwrights Realm produced the world premiere of Sarah DeLappe's The Wolves, which is currently hailed as one of the "25 Best American Plays Since ‘Angels in America'" by the New York Times, and was recently featured on TCG's "Top 10 Most-Produced Plays in 2018-2019" list. Other previous productions by The Playwrights Realm include Noah Diaz's Richard & Jane & Dick & Sally (in partnership with Baltimore Center Stage, where it was performed before its New York run was canceled due to the pandemic, with The Realm paying the entire creative team in full and the actors through opening night), Anna Moench's Mothers (2019), Jonathan Payne's The Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll'd (2018), Don Nguyen's Hello, From the Children of Planet Earth  (2018), Michael Yates Crowley's The Rape of the Sabine Women, by Grace B. Matthias (2017), Jen Silverman's The Moors (2017), Mfoniso Udofia's Sojourners (2016), Anna Ziegler's A Delicate Ship (2015), Anton Dudley's City Of (2015), Elizabeth Irwin's My Mañana Comes (2014), Lauren Yee's The Hatmaker's Wife (2013), Ethan Lipton's Red-Handed Otter (2012), Jen Silverman's Crane Story (2011), Gonzalo Rodriguez Risco's Dramatis Personae (2010), Christopher Wall's Dreams of the Washer King (2010), Anna Ziegler's Dov and Ali (2009) and Anton Dudley's Substitution (2008).

 

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