Playwrights’ Center sustains, develops, and advocates for playwrights and their work to realize their full artistic potential. Through the practice of inclusive theater-making, Playwrights’ Center fosters engagement towards an equitable, empathetic, and boundlessly imaginative world.

Founded in 1971 by six writers seeking artistic and professional support, Playwrights’ Center today serves more playwrights in more ways than any other organization in the country. Through partnerships, Playwrights’ Center provides more than $450,000 each year to playwrights and theater artists across the country. Currently led by Executive Director, Robert Chelimsky and Producing Artistic Director, Nicole A. Watson, Playwrights’ Center continues to break ground with playwright-centric development processes, bold theater relationships, and online and onsite resources serving 2,500 member playwrights worldwide, representing a vast array of identities, experience levels, aesthetics, and relationships to the professional theater field. The Center’s role is to support the vision of every playwright, whatever the form their new play may take and wherever the development process may lead them, to tell the story they choose without the pressures of production. Playwrights’ Center’s programs fall into four primary focus areas: individualized artist support, including fellowships and residency opportunities; new play development; community and educational resources; and amplifying and connecting playwrights and theater-makers beyond their participation in Playwrights’ Center programs. 

Jerome Foundation supports Playwrights’ Center’s Jerome Fellowship, Many Voices Fellowship, and Many Voices Mentorship programs. The Jerome Fellowship and Many Voices Fellowship are two-year programs that provide early career Minnesota-based playwrights with a salary to support customized play development through workshops with professional directors, dramaturgs, and actors. Fellows work in an individualized and hands-on way with Playwrights’ Center artistic staff to develop their plays and connect playwrights to producers of new work. In addition to a salary, Fellows in these two programs are eligible for employer-sponsored health insurance. The Many Voices Mentorship program provides beginning playwrights the opportunity to develop work and free access to services designed to introduce them to the craft of playwriting. All Fellows and Mentees are welcomed to Playwrights’ Center as part of a cohort, with the expectation of a local residency and peer-to-peer engagement at artistic community events, an annual artists’ retreat, and monthly cohort check-ins. These programs are led by Director of Fellowships Lynde Rosario.