Supported by a grant from The Ruth Easton Fund of the Edelstein Family Foundation, The Ruth Easton Lab gives the nation's most exciting writers the time and tools to develop new work for the stage. The Center's Core Writers travel to Minneapolis from across the country to move their plays closer to production with the support of the finest dramaturgical minds in the nation, under the leadership of Resident Director Hayley Finn.
The Core Writer Program
The Playwrights' Center invites committed professional playwrights to apply for the Core Writer Program. Created in recognition of the particular needs of emerging and established writers, the Core Writer Program is intended to significantly further a playwright's career. The Core Writer Program is available to writers both locally and nationally.
Learn more about the Core Writer Program and how to apply >
Back to TopEpisode One
by Dominic Orlando
16 year-old Adam Parker has decided that his comic books have more to teach him about the world than high school--so he becomes a supervillain, enlisting the aid of the newly dis- graced Reverend Stanley (and his teenage girlfriend)--together the trio holds their small town hostage for a fortune in diamonds-- seed money for Adam's ultimate plans of world domination. Can the prettiest girl in school and the Captain of the football team save the day?
SPACE
by Keli Garrett
11/02/2009“I am – we are, finally – neither from here nor there, from then or now.” In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, reporter Kassandra Dupris is taken hostage by a white supremacist group. As the floodwaters rise, reports of rescued puppies compete with underreported stories of loss and devastation. A door opens, and time and place shift between Hurricane Katrina 2005 and the Great Mississippi Floods of 1927.
“I am – we are, finally – neither from here nor there, from then or now.” In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, reporter Kassandra Dupris is taken hostage by a white supremacist group. As the floodwaters rise, reports of rescued puppies compete with underreported stories of loss and devastation. A door opens, and time and place shift between Hurricane Katrina 2005 and the Great Mississippi Floods of 1927.
ADY
by Rhiana Yazzie
12/07/2009A Lee Miller photograph of surrealist artists that includes a dancer from the West Indies naked to the waist is the jumping off place for this play. A contemporary Navajo woman relates the mostly unknown story of the surrealist muse Adrienne Fidelin, Ady. A play that reveals the woman in the photograph through the lens of race, history, and art.
THE BAY OF FUNDY
by Sherry Kramer
01/11/2010A troubled marriage, a mysterious malaise, and where is that all that water coming from? May has an antique early American table that is perhaps the most valuable table in the world, a husband who's having a mid-myth crisis, and a problem. A play about the myth of money in the new America.
Then Waves
by Kevin Anthony Kautzman
02/01/2010A discharged American soldier returns from war to do violence upon his estranged son, who may not be his at all. Set in the American Midwest, Then Waves explores the issues of violence's echo, the cost of war, and the impulses toward destruction that ravage families and destroy the future.
THE DWINDLES
by Barbara Field
03/01/2010A year of free room and board, scintillating conversation and compelling company at a renowned artist’s colony? Sounds too good to be true to Edward MacKenzie, a has been artist whose career once was. He’s looking for inspiration, but what he discovers is a collection of temperamental artists – and a corpse. Along the way, he has a close encounter with his past and his future.
This reading is dedicated to the memory of actor, playwright, and theater professor Charles Nolte. In the early 1970s, Nolte inspired four University of Minnesota students, including Barbara Field, to form a group to read one another’s plays—and the Playwrights’ Center was born. Prior to the reading, friends and admirers of Nolte, including Playwrights’ Center co-founder John Olive, will take time to remember Nolte and his impact on their careers and on the theater community of the Twin Cities over the years.
RICH GIRL
by Victoria Stewart
04/05/2010When Claudine meets Henry, a starving artist, she falls head over heels. Her mother, a financial guru, has her doubts. Is Henry everything her daughter has been looking for? Or is he after only one thing? A modern day adaptation of Henry James’ Washington Square, RICH GIRL is about women and their relationship to men, mothers and money –in that order.
Little Eyes
by Cory Hinkle
05/03/2010After his father disappears, 10-year-old Martin believes he can hear the Voice of God. When a mysterious man from the mayor’s office arrives selling The Project, Martin sees a way to find his missing father and bring himself closer to the Lord. LITTLE EYES is a darkly funny exploration of American fear, denial and religious fundamentalism in the months right after 9/11.









