In October, after several seasons of success with their Wright-Right-Now (“WRN”) program – the micro-commissioning series in which playwrights produce patron-prompted short plays on demand – Center Stage introduced the Wright Now, Play Later (“WNPL”) project. With WNPL, patron-prompted short plays are not only commissioned, they are performed!
So far the program has presented exciting, public-commissioned short plays from an impressive list of playwrights: Nathan Alan Davis, Larissa FastHorse, Hank Boland, Amy E. Witting, and Paul Eddy; Tegan McLeod and Ismail Khalidi; and Allison Gregory, Steven Dietz, Jenny Connell Davis, Marcus Gardley, and KJ Sanchez.
All of this month’s excellent playwrights have a prior connection to Center Stage.
In 2014, Center Stage conducted a Play Lab workshop for Lauren Yee’s King of the Yees. A production of that play will be performed at The Goodman Theater in Chicago this March and April.
Miranda Rose Hall was the first playwright in Center Stage’s Hot Desk Playwright Residency program, and she helped found the Wright-Right-Now series, which led to this current spin off, WNPL.
Juliana Avery
Juliana Avery was honored at the Center Stage Young Playwrights Festival when she was a high school senior, and then went on to become a professional playwright. She also submitted a piece to My America, Center Stage’s 50th Anniversary project in 2012, which you can find here.
How to Participate
TODAY, Center Stage is soliciting prompts from the public. The theme for this final Wright Now Play Later is “Renovations.” Go to Center Stage’s FaceBook or Twitter and post a prompt for a brand-new short play.
On Wednesday, return to Center Stage’s FaceBook or Twitter to vote for your favorite play from each of this month’s participating playwrights.
On Thursday, the winning plays will be performed in a staged reading for the public. A group of actors are on call and will have about an hour to rehearse before presenting the brand-new short plays on Thursday at 1:00 pm.
To add to the fun, spontaneous nature of the project, the plays will be performed in “pop-up” locations in public spaces or local businesses in Baltimore City. These locations will not be disclosed until Thursday morning on FaceBook or Twitter. For those unable to get to these temporary theater spaces in person, the performances will be live-streamed on FaceBook Live and Periscope.
So head over to Center Stage’s FaceBook or Twitter pages and submit a prompt for a play to be used in the final installation of Wright Now Play Later! If it’s selected, you can be watching it come to life this Thursday.
LINKS:
Videos of previous WNPL plays: December, November,and October 2016.
All the written plays and playwright info from the series.
December’s “Wright Now Play Later.”
