Tags: National Reports

Jeannie Barroga has been called “a prototype of a new American playwright … writing from the hub of a hundred cultural intersections" (Robert Kelley, former artistic director of TheatreWorks). Barroga is a playwriting mentor through StateraArts, a champion of San Francisco Bay Area Filipinx theatre, and an award-winning playwright whose...

2021 is shaping up to be a year of tremendous change with reasons for optimism and concern in every aspect of our work. As winter wound down in Chicago, we surveyed membership to ask a few key questions: What is missed most from pre-pandemic theatre? What new ways of working are worth...

Anyika McMillan-Herod is co-founder and executive director of Soul Rep Theatre Company, the longest operating theatre company celebrating the stories of the Black community in Dallas. In January of 2021, her new play DO NO HARM reveals the struggle of three enslaved women who served as guinea pigs for Dr. J. Marion Sims, who is known as the father of Modern Gynecology. DO NO HARM was scheduled for the stage as part of Soul Rep’s...

Nearly a decade ago, JuCoby Johnson left the warmer climes of Jacksonville, FL, and headed north to the Twin Cities to find stability in an otherwise unstable career as a theatre artist. Being that talking about the weather is a well-established pastime in Minnesota, one might say that to...

In early December we had David Valdes, Miranda ADEkoje, and Lia Romeo join us for a panel on writing plays for Zoom/streaming or adapting material for virtual performance. David’s play, Downtown Crossing, about undocumented immigrants, was the result of a two-year collaboration...

With a February 2021 production of Darrah Cloud’s (NYS) new play Turning, followed by a trio of Spring readings (April 14, 21, 28), the Hackettstown NJ-based Centenary Stage Company Women Playwrights Series is celebrating its 28th year of new play development work. Founded in 1992 by then-Managing Director Catherine Rust (continuing now as the WPS Program Director) to “provide a working platform for the underserved voices of...

Rachael Carnes (DG Rep, Oregon) and I stepped into our new roles during a pandemic that left us with limited access to our usual toolboxes. So, with the Pacific Northwest as our unifying banner, we teamed up across state lines, along with ambassadors Bryan Harnetiaux and j.chavez (Washington)...

Nearly a decade ago, JuCoby Johnson left the warmer climes of Jacksonville, FL, and headed north to the Twin Cities to find stability in an otherwise unstable career as a theatre artist.

Before COVID-19 related shutdowns, DG member DAVID HANSEN had taken up the discipline of writing one short play every morning as a way to process reflections on what he called “both grief and memory.”

As I near the end of my third year, I started to reflect on our past gatherings and recent events. Of course, none of what we achieved would have possible without the hard work and support of our Ambassadors, ERICA MCGEE (NC) and TRIZA COX (SC).

2020 has brought Oregon dramatists’ inherent can-do spirit to the fore. 

The voices of playwrights are powerful tools in creating social change, including being an active force to address climate change. Some of our region’s members who have written plays about climate change share their thoughts on writing, activism, and their potential impact.