Playwrights Unit
What is the Playwrights Unit?
In 1982, Tarragon’s Artistic Director, Urjo Kareda, came up with an exciting new idea to support play development at the theatre: he formed the Playwrights Unit, an innovative group designed to bring six playwrights together to develop new work for the stage over the course of a year. Together with Associate Artistic Director Andy McKim, Urjo ran the Playwrights Unit until 2001, encouraging over 100 playwrights to transform their ideas into scripts, and generating more than twenty new plays for Tarragon’s stages. Thanks to their success, this model for new play development has been replicated in theatres across the country.
Artistic Director Richard Rose continues to run the Playwrights Unit, which includes both emerging and established writers, as well as other theatre artists (directors, actors) who have decided to cross over to playwriting. While the Unit provides the much-needed opportunity to create a play with support and guidance from fellow writers and Tarragon’s senior artistic staff, it is also important as a forum for the exchange of theatrical ideas, and the exploration of different writing processes.
The activities of the Playwrights Unit culminate in Play Reading Week, a series of free public readings of the Unit members’ work.
Past members of the Playwrights Unit include Morwyn Brebner, Susan Coyne, Brendan Gall, Jonathan Garfinkel, Michael Healey, Rosa Laborde, and Hannah Moscovitch.
Admission to the Playwrights Unit is by invitation only.
This year’s unit: Marie Beath Badian, Leanna Brodie, Jason Maghanoy, Haley McGee, Bobby Theodore and Evan Tsitsias.
For the history of the Playwrights Unit click here.
Can I apply for the Playwrights Unit?
There is no application process to the Playwrights Unit.
Acceptance into the Playwrights Unit is by invitation only.
- The playwright writes dialogue and dramatic action (conflict) well.
- The playwright has a good theatrical imagination and understands how to tell a story through the medium of theatre, as opposed to the media of film, television, poetry or prose.
- The playwright writes plays that explore the complexity of the human condition, that examine what it means to be a human being in a particular place and time, and that avoid one-sided characters and easy answers to multifaceted problems.
- The playwright has worked on a production of his/her play outside of an educational setting. This production can be fully independent and self-produced, or take place in the context of the many new play festivals across the country.