Over the past year I’ve had the privilege of working with an incredible group of DC-based writers in Woolly Mammoth’s inaugural local Playwrights Group. Once a month, we’ve met to read and critique works-in-progress, shared resources and opportunities for exposure and growth, and commiserated about the struggle of being working artists today. Last weekend, staged readings of our work.
Every community needs several groups like this maintain a healthy ecosystem. It’s not sustainable to just ship artists to a handful of cities, with struggling biomes of their own (even The Lark went extinct in New York). For now, I want to reflect on receiving this gift at all.
As a developmental opportunity, a ten-minute excerpt reading with one hour of rehearsal can only go so far, but it was invaluable as a way to introduce ourselves to Woolly’s community both as individual artists and as a group. Fortunately, we also recently learned that the Playwrights Group will be expanded in the coming year — more details should come on that soon.
My brilliant co-hort: Caleen Sinnette Jennings, Doug Robinson, Jason Tseng, Seshat Yon’shea Walker, Mekala Sridhar, KJ Moran Velz, and Sopan Deb.
