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Young Playwrights' Theater teaches students
to express themselves clearly and creatively
through the art of playwriting.
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Special Projects
Young Playwrights’ Theater often collaborates with theaters, museums, and other institutions to create timely works, highlighting the voices of DC students in some of Washington’s most prestigious venues.
Businesses, museums, theaters or community organizations seeking to create a special project with YPT can contact Producing Artistic Director and CEO David Snider at dsnider@yptdc.org.
Looking back...
Past Collaborations
Check out some of our past works below.
The Civil War Special Project
Spring 2011
 Monday, June 13, 2011
7pm Performance
As part of our Special Projects program, YPT was commissioned by Ford’s Theatre to explore some of the themes and issues that still reverberate today from the beginning of the Civil War.
During six weeks of workshops, approximately 100 students at Banneker High School and Kelly Miller Middle School explored why and how the war began - and wrote monologues, scenes and short plays based on their own views of the war and how it still resonates in their lives today.
The Woodlawn Cemetery Project
Winter 2011
On February 7, 2011, at 7pm at GALA Hispanic Theatre (3333 14th St. NW), YPT premiered Woodlawn, a new play created collaboratively with residents and organizations throughout Ward 7 in Washington, DC. The play explores the history and heritage of WoodlawnCemetery, the final resting place of 36,000 extraordinary Americans, many lost to history, until now. The play explores the value of knowing our history and how learning our history can help us to learn about ourselves, where we’ve been and where we may be going.
The Good Neighbor
YPT Collaborates with Fannie Mae to Premiere Community Play on Homelessness
Update: On June 24, 2011, YPT was excited to launch the new playwriting curriculum we created with Fannie Mae in the Fall of 2010. Beginning this summer, this innovative, interactive writing curriculum is being used in classrooms throughout the nation in conjunction with Fannie Mae’s annual Help the Homeless campaign, raising awareness and involving the community in solving the issue of homelessness.
Young Playwrights’ Theater (YPT) is excited to announce a new partnership with Fannie Mae’s Help the Homeless Program. With the help of Fannie Mae, YPT has created a community play in hopes of raising public awareness to support organizations working to prevent and end homelessness in the Washington DC metropolitan area.
Choosing Change
Spring 2009
By the students of Oak Hill Academy
Directed by David Andrew Snider
In collaboration with the students of Oak Hill Academy and Mentoring Today, this piece explores life before, during and after contact with the DC Juvenile Justice system. Through poetry, prose and interactive storytelling, this play shares the heart of those who travel through the system – and how the system is regaining its heart.
Chasing George Washington:
A White House Adventure
A world premiere Kennedy Center co-commission and co-production with the White House Historical Association
Book and lyrics by Karen Zacarías
Music by Deborah Wicks La Puma
Directed by John Vreeke
March 8-16, 2008
Venue:
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Field trips are fun, especially when your destination is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue! In this charming new musical, written in part with DC students and Young Playwrights’ Theater, Dee Dee, Jose, and Annie accidentally knock George Washington out of his portrait and into real life--turning their tour into an unexpected adventure. As they try to get the nation’s first President back into his painting, the threesome encounters other famous White House residents, including Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd, Dolley Madison, and Jackie Kennedy. Together, they learn that the White House isn’t just a historic building... it’s also a home.
The Nation of Immigrants Project
Presented by Patrick Crowley and YPT
 Who gets to decide who belongs in the United States of America?
Young Playwrights’ Theater and playwright Patrick Crowley, in partnership with GALA Hispanic Theatre, presented the professional premiere of The Nation of Immigrants Project. The community was invited to readings and discussion of this new play, generated via community and in-school workshops and written by Patrick Crowley with support from the Creative Communities Fund of the National Capital Region. The evening was an exciting exploration of multiple points of view, hot button topics and great insight into one artistic process and how a community can integrate their voices and views into a work of art. We are gratified that so many chose to join us and offer their points of view on this Nation of Immigrants. Special thanks to GALA Hispanic Theatre.
American Rice
The Smithsonian Institution commissioned Young Playwrights’ Theater to create an original piece on Asian American identity. YPT Program Manager Patrick Torres led six months of workshops with Asian American students through Washington, ranging in age from elementary to high School. Patrick Crowley compiled their writing into American Rice, which was performed at the Smithsonian Institutions’ Discovery Theater in May of 2007.
American Rice was also produced by the Discovery Theater again in the Spring of 2008.
African Roots Latino Soul
“What is the music inside you?”
Karen Zacarias explored this question in her innovative piece African Roots/Latino Soul.
Students from MacFarland Middle School and Bell Multicultural High School provided original writing on their African, Latino and Caribbean heritage. Karen Zacarias molded their work into African Roots/Latino Soul presented by the Smithsonian Institution’s Discovery Theater in October 2006 and produced again in October 2007 in response to viewer demand.
Retratos
 Inspired by the National Portrait Gallery’s traveling art exhibit Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits, YPT’s Retratos was commissioned by the Smithsonian’s Discovery Theater.
More than 60 students from Bancroft Elementary, Oyster Elementary and Lincoln Middle school created stories, dialogues and monologues in response to the exhibit’s paintings. Students were invited to imagine the lives of those in the portraits.
The resulting play, compiled by Karen Zacarias was a celebration of Hispanic history and culture, performed in October 2005.
Choices
 Written by Bell Multicultural High School students in reaction to the Holocaust, Choices was a life-changing experience for many of its writers.
After reading Elie Weisel’s Night and through pen-pal relationships with the Kfar HaNoar Mozenson school students in Hod HaSharon, Israel, the Bell students were inspired to express their own struggles with violence and loss. Karen Zacarias worked with them to create Choices. Students told of losing their houses to arson, and holding dying friends in their arms as a means of trying to imagine the degree of loss and sacrifice endured by those targeted during the Holocaust, as well as their resolve.
Choices was directed by Abel Lopez and performed at Theater J in 2004.
Holy Ghosts: Stories from Meridian Hill
 Working with Washington Parks and People, students in YPT’s After-School program explored Meridian Hill Park, an urban jewel in the midst of Washington, DC and a setting for many historic events.
Students interviewed community members about their experiences and memories of the park.
Their play Holy Ghosts: Stories from Meridian Hill was performed in Meridian Hill Park in 2001 by professional actors.
Special Projects Photo Album
The slideshow below will begin automatically. Roll over the image to change the speed of the slideshow. Click on the image to view details and captions for any photo. You can also visit the full album of
Special Projects photos on Flickr.
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