The Midwest Dramatists Center, a collective founded
to serve and support local playwrights, announced today that applications for its
next class are now available.
As
many as five writers will be selected for a five-year residency at MDC, joining
the inaugural class in a community of playwrights that enjoys access to a range
of career-development resources. These include the workshops and staged
readings of residents’ work that MDC hosts in its theatre space at the Writers
Place, 3607 Pennsylvania, as well as staff support to help shape new plays and
connect them with theatres and institutions that
produce original work regionally and nationally.
Anyone
age 21 and older who resides in the Kansas City metropolitan area and can
demonstrate a commitment to the craft of playwriting is eligible to apply.
Applications will be accepted beginning January 15, 2015, and are due February 28, 2015. To apply, click here.
MDC’s overriding mission is to support playwrights on that
difficult career stretch from “emerging” to “established,” and to amplify new
voices in the American theatre. It was launched earlier this year by
playwrights Bryan Colley, David Hanson, Michelle T. Johnson, and Vicki Vodrey.
Since acquiring its space this spring, MDC has hosted nearly a dozen staged
readings of new work, and MDC playwrights have seen their plays produced to
critical acclaim at the Kansas City Fringe Festival, MeltingPot KC, and by
companies from New York to Philadelphia to Palm Springs.
The call for applications is the next important step in MDC’s
growth, as it builds toward a full complement of 20-25 writers over the next
few years. Final selections for the 2015 class will be announced by late spring,
and the chosen playwrights will begin their participation with MDC this summer.
“The theater lives, breathes, and thrives only when new voices
tell compelling stories that need to be heard on stage,” says Hanson. “MDC is
about finding those emerging voices for the theater and giving them a place to
create new works, as part of a family of other writers, and receive
professional support so those stories get out into the world. Today is special
for us as we begin the process of identifying those voices that we hope will
shape the future of theater.”
