Playwrights’ Center is an accelerator for playwrights and new plays. How do they accomplish this? Executive Director Robert Chelimsky explains how this organization supports artists and why their work is important.
Transcript
Intro: This is Minnesota’s Legacy: A look at the organizations and peoples who have benefitted from Minnesota’s unique Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment
Britt Aamodt: Have you ever seen an egg incubator? One of those devices that provides a controlled environment that helps a fertilized egg hatch? The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis does the same thing but for artists.
SFX: sounds of air decompressing
Music: percussion, piano
Robert Chelimsky: The artists that we particularly support are playwrights.
Aamodt: Robert Chelimsky is the center’s Executive Director.
Chelimsky: The thing that I always like to talk about is really we are an incubator and accelerator for playwrights and for new plays.
SFX: swoosh
Aamodt: The Playwrights’ Center started in 1971 with just six writers. Now it has 2,500 member playwrights from all over.
Chelimsky: We help support writers who are coming from different backgrounds, different walks of life, tell their story. When people hear each other’s stories, they start to develop understanding of each other.
Percussive music
Aamodt: The Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund allows the Playwrights’ Center to provide the right kind of environment—like group script reads and collaborations with national theaters—to get more plays off the page and onto the stage.
Piano music
Aamodt: Check out the Playwright Center online at pwcenter.org
Outro: Minnesota’s Legacy is a production of AMPERS, with support from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, more at ampers dot org.