City Theatre Young Playwrights is a comprehensive, dynamic arts education program serving teachers, students, and the Pittsburgh community. The program fulfills state academic standards, including Arts & Humanities and Reading, Writing, Speaking, & Listening. Four major components make up the Young Playwrights program: the Young Playwrights Teacher Institute, In-School Workshops, the Young Playwrights Contest, and the Young Playwrights Festival.
Young Playwrights Teacher Institute
Teachers take on the role of students during this professional development intensive. With the help of City Theatre professionals, teachers get to jump-start their own writing skills while learning creative ways to incorporate playwriting and basic theatre skills into their classrooms. Open to teachers of grades 4-12.
In-School Workshops
In-School Workshops
A City Theatre teaching artist works in a collaborative partnership with the classroom teacher to facilitate in-school playwriting workshops for students. Students learn improvisation and basic theatre skills in an ensemble-based environment, as well as monologue writing, dialogue writing, character creation, and other fundamentals of playwriting. Using these elements, students compose a full scene, which is then expanded into a one-act play. Students participate in moderated constructive peer review of each other’s work, and have the unique opportunity to receive one-on-one feedback from the theatre artist in individual revision conferences. This dynamic approach to arts education fulfills state and national standards including PA Arts and Humanities Standards (9.1–9.4) and PA Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening Standards (1.1–1.8).
Find out more and download a workshop application.
Young Playwrights Contest
Our annual contest encourages western Pennsylvania students to make their voices heard by writing and submitting original one-act plays. Every script received is read and evaluated by our Literary Committee, and each student receives a written summary of the evaluator's comments, constructive criticism, and encouraging suggestions for continued revisions. Selected plays from the contest are represented each year in our annual Young Playwrights Festival.
Find out more about the Young Playwrights Contest.
Young Playwrights Festival
Selected submissions to the Contest are given professional staged readings at City Theatre as part of the annual Young Playwrights Festival. Student playwrights have the opportunity to develop their scripts in collaboration with professional dramaturgs, directors, and actors.
Find out more about the Young Playwrights Festival.