BWW Previews: Derby City Playwrights Fosters New Full-Length Plays

Among its various and sundry attributes, Louisville's theater community is a writer-friendly place.

From the perennial showcase of national, new and noteworthy in Actors Theatre's Humana Festival to local troupe Theatre [502]'s focus on providing regional premieres of "recent and relevant" works, down to the great quantity of 10-minute plays premiering yearly in the Ten-Tucky and Finnigan Festivals, new plays by working writers bring both actors and audiences to the playhouses.

A new group is adding its efforts to the mix, with a focus as much on process as on product.

The Derby City Playwrights is a new collective of Kentuckiana-based writers committed to the development of new full-length plays. Over the course of the next nine months, each member of the group of 12 will create a new play, presenting their works-in-progress at monthly meetings for peer feedback from the other members.

The plays will be presented publicly in live readings. The first play from the group, David Clark's "Bananapocalypse," received its premiere Oct. 12 and will be followed by readings of "Broken Iris" by Ben Unwin on Oct. 19 and "A Bird to the Mountain" by Rachel White on Oct. 26, all at The Bard's Town.

The members of the Derby City Playwrights are: Walker, Clark, Tad Chitwood, Nancy Gall-Clayton, Ben Gierhart, Amanda Haan, Eli Keel, Becky LeCron, Unwin, White, Bryce Woodard, and Todd Zeigler.

(Full disclosure: I am a member.)

DCP was initially the brainchild of Brian Walker, a Louisville playwright, actor and producer who first envisioned a writer's collective for Louisville after a residency at Tennessee Repertory Theater in 2013 for his play "The Friend Factory."

"They bring four playwrights in each year to develop a full-length play," Walker said. "I felt like we could do something like that here, too."

Walker also took inspiration from other playwright collectives around the country like Washington D.C.'s The Welders and 13P in New York City. Walker had built a vast network of local writers as creator and producer of the annual Finnegan's Festival of Funky Fresh Fun showcase of 10-minute works, but the development of full-length works was a solitary pursuit.

"For play development for a serious local playwright, you have to leave town. I was getting tired of leaving town," Walker said. "I wanted to have an incubator for myself, but I also believe we learn best from our peers, and looking around I saw other playwrights with that same need. I've been writing plays and producing for over 10 years now and feel I have a ton to offer in terms of talking about plays and nurturing theater."

DCP meetings consist of writers presenting excerpts to be read out loud; afterward, discussion is opened on each piece's strengths and weaknesses. The playwrights might request feedback on specific attributes or suggest paying attention to certain qualities of their work, but in the feedback period, they neither engage nor defend; they merely take notes, turn questions around to foster further discussion, and leave with 11 other writers' perspective on how to move their plays further toward completion.

Live readings will be minimally staged; the focus will always be on the text. A talk-back period with the audience will be held after each reading.

DCP members are cast in the readings, in addition to fulfilling all the necessary functions of any full-fledged theater group such as box office and marketing. In forming the group, Walker specifically looked for theater artists whose talents extend beyond the page.

"It was also important to me that each member bring something to the table other than their play and to be willing to do heavy lifting," Walker said.

Clark, a writer for the stage since college who earned his Master's degree in playwriting, also brings more than 10 years' experience in non-profit administration, over seven of that working in theater fundraising, education and marketing. That background is what he hopes to contribute toward making DCP a success.

"As a father of a two-year-old, I can't really go off cross-country and do developmental work," Clark said. "I can send my plays out into the world and let theaters do what they want, but I can't participate in the development. So I needed a place where I could do that and still be a supportive husband and father, which is what I hope DCP can bring to me."

Walker said he finds many aspects of DCP's mission exciting: having 12 local playwrights produce 12 new works, through a process that will make each member a better writer.

"Also very exciting to me is the potential to engage new people in the new play development process," Walker said. "To get non-theater folks excited about what we're doing and the potential for Louisville to become a new play exporter to the larger American theater family."

"No one else is doing this," Clark said. "No one else is really focusing on new full-length work from this community. We have theaters that are bringing in new work, which is fantastic and our community needs that as well, but beyond 10-minute plays, Louisville does not have a group devoted just to nourishing local playwrights. And the fact that we have 12 talented writers who have already demonstrated exciting work in the past few months just proves that there is a need for this kind of organization."

For more information, go to www.facebook.com/derbycityplaywrights.

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