Playwrights Foundation

Playwrights Foundation

Our Story: Founded in 1976, Playwrights Foundation is today widely recognized as one of the top organizations in the U.S. dedicated to the creative development and career acceleration of contemporary playwrights. Over 80% of the plays we develop have gone on to successful productions, winning awards and accolades.

Our Mission: Our mission is to support and champion diverse contemporary...
Our Story: Founded in 1976, Playwrights Foundation is today widely recognized as one of the top organizations in the U.S. dedicated to the creative development and career acceleration of contemporary playwrights. Over 80% of the plays we develop have gone on to successful productions, winning awards and accolades.

Our Mission: Our mission is to support and champion diverse contemporary playwrights in the creation of new works to sustain theater as a vital, dynamic art form.

Our Values: Playwrights are the center of our universe. Pure and simple. We value diverse, complex, and experimental new works.

We position the playwright as the leading creative voice in a developing play, and Playwrights Foundation has earned a national reputation for introducing a variety of terrific new voices, and work that challenges assumptions about identity, form, and the viability of artistic complexity for the theater. In the past decade, nearly 40% of the playwrights have been from a diverse range of communities of color, and 50% have been women.

Playwrights Foundation’s primary artistic goals are: to elevate the role of the playwright as a 21st Century storyteller across live and mediated platforms; to provide a home that supports, encourages and advances the creative process of contemporary playmaking; and to feed the tributaries of the American theater, within the Bay Area and beyond.

Submission period: August through mid-October. Please see our website for submission policies. www.playwrightsfoundation.org

Organization Overview
Founded in 1976 by Robert Woodruff to provide a forum for vanguard playwrights to experiment with new ideas, to develop and nurture creative collaborative relationships, and push the boundaries of the form, PF has since served nearly 500 emergent playwrights in successive waves, providing them with the indispensable, illusive resources and support required to advance new plays early in their development toward production. Our program alumni, first discovered early in their careers, have given voice to the social issues of the day, uplifted our cultural heritage, experimented in new forms, and promoted connectedness between people, and now include some of the most prominent names in contemporary theater, including Sam Shepard, David Henry Hwang, Nilo Cruz, Anna Deavere Smith, Philip Kan Gotanda, Paula Vogel, and Naomi Iizuka, to name just a few.

In the past fifteen years, over 80% of the artists we have worked with received subsequent productions, and their experience with the BAPF, has proven to be a significant step in that process. Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop; Lauren Yee’s Samsara; Kimber Lee’s brownsville song: b-side for tray, Chris Chen’s The Hundred Flowers Project, Peter Nachtrib’s Bob, along with Aaron Loeb, Lauren Gunderson, Marisela Orta, and Yussef el Guindi exemplify a few of the many recent beneficiaries of our work. Since 2012, program alumni have won three consecutive Will Glickman new play awards, Sam Hunter (BAPF 2007) won the MacArthur Genius Award, and Annie Baker (also BAPF 2007) won the Pulitzer. Both of these artists had their very first professional experiences at PF. In 2011, two PF workshopped plays had Broadway runs: Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo and Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop.

The centerpiece of our programming is the Bay Area Playwrights Festival (BAPF); as one of the first and longest-running new play festivals in the U.S., the BAPF is a hothouse for new work, which has supported over 300 diverse, fiercely talented writers. PF’s other programs are: the Producing Partners Initiative /Commissioning Program, the New Play Institute; the Rough Readings Series; the Resident Playwrights Program; the SF One-Minute Play Festival; and Des Voix…Found in Translation. Through these innovative programs, PF is continuing to fulfill our role as an essential resource for writers to develop new work, learn new skills, forge connections with producers, and engage audiences with their work.

Current Staff: Executive Artistic Director Jessica Bird Beza, Literary Manager Heather Helinsky, Associate Literary Manager Kieran Beccia

Recommended by Playwrights Foundation

  • All I Wanna Do Is Be Pretty Like You by Katherine Gwynn
    11 Oct. 2023
    “ The community of national and local readers for the 46th Bay Area Playwrights Festival enthusiastically recommends ALL I WANNA DO IS BE PRETTY LIKE YOU. We were compelled by the way the writer handles complex narratives of the exploitation of women and teenagers, the male gaze, objectification, the difference between consent and pleasure. We were engaged by the questions this play raises about gender in a highly theatrical way, and if it can be expressed without it being watched or commodified. We hope this play is widely read, finds dedicated collaborators, and moves swiftly towards production. #BAPF46 ”
  • These and Those by Ruth Geye
    11 Oct. 2023
    “ The community of national and local readers for the 46th Bay Area Playwrights Festival enthusiastically recommends THESE & THOSE as a Semi-Finalist at Playwrights Foundation. We were compelled by the play's interrogations of how observing traditions shapes one's worldview, as well as friendships and relationships. We were deeply moved by the impact of the end of the play on the characters, and variety of ways political and religious ideas can mix. We hope this play is widely read, finds dedicated collaborators, and moves swiftly towards production. #BAPF 46 ”
  • The Mother by Lynne Conner
    11 Oct. 2023
    “ The community of national and local readers for the 46th Bay Area Playwrights Festival enthusiastically recommends THE MOTHER as a Semi-Finalist at Playwrights Foundation. We commend the writer for moving us fluidly between realistic worlds to surreal and abstract spaces in this examination of upending changes on the mother in the wake of a school shooting. We were compelled by the potential of this play for initiating community conversations about empathy in this non-linear, self-aware telling. We hope this play is widely read, finds dedicated collaborators, and moves swiftly towards production. #BAPF 46 ”
  • 1898 or How Sugar Conquered The Enchantment by Nelson Diaz-Marcano
    26 Sep. 2023
    “ The community of national and local readers for the 46th Bay Area Playwrights Festival enthusiastically recommends 1898 or HOW SUGAR CONQUERED THE ENCHANTMENT as a Semi-Finalist at Playwrights Foundation. We were compelled by this story of American capitalist seduction on an influential family that becomes complicit, with the energy and pace of a horror/romance play as the monster of colonialism tries to consume the young. We were highly engaged by the play's rhythms, poetic imagery, and the hope in the midst of impending injustices. We hope this play is widely read, finds dedicated collaborators, and moves swiftly towards production. #BAPF46 ”
  • Maddie on Her Way Home by B.J. Burton
    26 Sep. 2023
    “ The community of national & local readers for the 46th Bay Area Playwrights festival enthusiastically recommends MADDIE ON HER WAY HOME as a Semi-Finalist at Playwrights Foundation. We were compelled by the authentic voice writing about elder care, the health system's failure, grief, economic insecurity, false friends, and spousal abuse. We were engaged by the dramatic irony, the careful rendering of sisters and building of tension, and ultimately, the dramatic question of how to re-build trust with found friends. We hope this play is widely read, finds dedicated collaborators, and moves swiftly towards production. #BAPF46 ”
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