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Monday night marks the beginning of "PlayLabs," a weeklong workshop hosted by the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. The goal is to help writers move their works from the page to the stage.


 
Alice Tuan, who's been writing for the theater for 20 years, is one of three playwrights participating in this year's PlayLabs festival.
 

"This is the fourth draft now, and I've not had any process with it," she said. "So it's been in my head the whole time. And so now it's kind of crucial to actually have collaborators to help interpret."


 
The Playwrights' Center serves a network of nearly 2,000 playwrights worldwide, providing tools and career-development opportunities. The center's artistic director, Jeremy Cohen, said the PlayLabs workshop offers the writers a chance to test out their ideas.


 
What's more, he said, it's "an opportunity for artistic leaders from around the country — very different-sized theaters, producing very different types of work — to not only see the plays but to really spend time with the artists."

 
Last year, Seattle Repertory Theatre's associate artistic director, Marya Sea Kaminski, attended PlayLabs and was delighted to get to know the playwrights as well as their plays.

"And it's funny, like having proximity to the playwright and getting to know them and their quirks and their interests and their personality, and even the rhythm of their speech, opens up the play," she said. "It almost speeds up that process of getting to know a play in an intimate way."

Finding plays for a theater is like a matchmaking game, she said. PlayLabs introduced her to a batch of new and exciting playwrights, and she's continuing to develop those relationships.

 
Kaminski said the Playwrights' Center is making vital contributions to the breadth of American theater. Cohen said that while theaters across the country are recognizing the importance of staging contemporary work by diverse talent, those productions still make up only a fraction of their seasons.

Racially diverse theater company comes 'Full Circle'

 
"The numbers are quite sad," he said. "We're very far away from anything like gender parity, certainly, on stages, and I think also with writers of very diverse culture, race and ethnicity, there's so much more work to be done. And we're here for it."
 

About two-thirds of the plays featured in PlayLabs over the past decade have been produced. But Cohen said he aches when he thinks about all the great plays still waiting for their first full staging.

 
"I could just sit here and tell you playwrights and playwrights and playwrights that I love, and who I wish more of their work was seen," he said.

 
PlayLabs runs through Sunday at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. Performances are free and open to the public.

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At a time when the nation is rapidly diversifying, PlayLabs is working to change the face of American theater.

PlayLabs helps writers move work from page to stage

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