How do directors and playwrights find each other today? Work together? What needs to change?

In the 2005 Lab we set out to discuss and share insights and techniques about working with writers and understanding how the structure and style of plays work - especially plays that are breaking new ground. We invited directors and writers well known in the field to share their insights. We spent some time opening up the actual process of collaboration between writers and directors in exercises designed to re-think how collaboration works and what lies behind many of the assumptions we think we share. We involved designers and actors in our work and brought into the light their contributions in the development of new plays. One of our long-term goals is to broaden the lines of communication between the playwriting and directing communities so that directors can find new writers and playwrights can have a chance to meet more directors. We wanted to look around at the environment today and discuss the state of playwriting and new play producing.

The poles of the tent of the Lab were five readings that everyone attended. Each play was an interesting example of a different kind of work. The plays were read so that all Lab participants could see them together and then discuss them as a group, hopefully sparking a wider conversation about playwriting in general.

Four of the plays were by American writers: Ken Urban (THE ABSENCE OF WEATHER), Peter Morris (GAUDEAMUS), Josh Drimmer (LOVE IS GOOD), and Zina Camblin (AND HER HAIR WENT WITH HER ...). The fifth play (FIREFLIES) was written by Japanese author Suzue Toshiro and translated by David G. Goodman.

Surrounding these five readings were examinations of 36 plays whose authors all participated in the Lab. The Lab began with a two-day intensive session analyzing the nature of collaboration devised by Ben Krywosz, a Minneapolis-based artistic director.

Next followed a series of exercises offering participating directors and playwrights great insight into artistic collaborations and how they can be shaped by unspoken assumptions. To complement these sessions, a variety of established artists who have spent their careers working on new plays spoke with the Lab directors. Actors Helen Stenborg and Julie Boyd and designer G.W. Mercier took part in a panel discussion on the new-play development model established by the O'Neill Playwrights Conference. LCT Associate Director Daniel Sullivan and playwright Donald Margulies spoke about the director-writer collaboration they have cultivated. Playwrights Lynn Nottage, John Weidman, and Warren Leight talked to the Lab about plays they had written set in foreign countries (Africa, Japan, and China, respectively). Among the other playwrights who spoke to Lab directors about working on new plays: Paula Vogel, Stephen Belber, Michael Weller, Winter Miller, and Samm-Art Williams.

Over the course of one weekend, Lab directors made field trips to several playwright organizations: Ensemble Studio Theatre's Youngblood unit for emerging playwrights, the Cherry Lane Alternative, 13 Playwrights, Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center, New Dramatists, and New York University's Musical Theatre Writing Program.