This Twin Cities stage for aspiring playwrights just got a lot bigger

For 46 years, Playwrights’ Center — the artistic launching pad of some of the nation’s most acclaimed playwrights — operated out of a former church building in Minneapolis’ Seward neighborhood. But playwriting is a team sport, and the Center was bursting at its rafters. 

“It came to the point where we had to start saying no to things because we didn’t have the space to say yes,” said Robert Chelimsky, the Center’s executive director.

Today, PWC finally has the space.

At a grand opening celebration on September 20, visitors toured its new building — double the size of its old — in St. Paul’s Creative Enterprise Zone, a city-designated arts hub along University Ave., bordering Minneapolis. 

In a space reclaimed from two vacant industrial buildings, performers offered what Producing Artistic Director Nicole Watson called “artistic amuse-bouche,” short snippets of scenes in development by the Center’s playwrights. In a scene from JuCoby Johnson’s “Help! Help! Want. Want. Want.” a mysterious repairman visited a woman getting high in the woods. Another featured an upbeat musical number — sung by a fish — from Tim Lord and Avi Amon’s “Through the Sunken Lands.”

Graduate school beginnings

Since its inception in 1971, PWC has nurtured artists as they work through the often invisible steps of creating new plays. The center provides mentorship, resources, networking and opportunities for plays in the works to be read by professional actors. The focus is on playwrights’ process over their product, meaning most workshops — about 60 per year — are not open to the public. 

The center got its start in 1971 as the brainchild of a group of aspiring playwrights at the University of Minnesota, including graduate student Barbara Field. In an interview I did with Field in 2013, she recalled coming up with the idea in her living room along with Tom Dunn and Eric Brogger, who had both taken Charles Nolte’s playwriting class. “We decided we could do it better if we were somehow one organization rather than three hungry voices,” said Field, who died in 2021. 

Others soon joined them. The group hosted readings at Coffman Union and the old firehouse on the West Bank, now home to the Mixed Blood Theatre. Later, they expanded to larger venues, like the Walker Art Center. Field went on to become the Guthrie Theater’s playwright in residence, where she penned its hugely successful adaptation of “A Christmas Carol.” 

Over the years, the center has developed an international reputation, housing artists like Larissa FastHorse, Lee Blessing and the legendary August Wilson. 

An affiliation with the center “can open a lot of doors,” said Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay, a current PWC playwright and author of the celebrated “Kung Fu Zombies Saga.” Her play “Seng’s Hair Salon” will get a production in April at Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre Company. “The [PWC] staff is there to help you make connections with theaters or artistic directors, even finding people to read your scripts and get feedback,” she said.

Related: Vongsay takes on spirituality, colonialism and cannibals in new play

In January at PWC, Vongsay will present a reading of her new play, “Dead Cops in Little Mekong,” featuring professional actors. It’s a chance not just to hear her words out loud, she said, but to gain feedback. 

Designed for dreaming

PWC’s new home includes a beautiful theater using wooden beams original to the building. Elsewhere in the center, architects and designers incorporated natural light, cozy corners and playful fixtures. “Every space has to feel very individualized,” said lighting designer Tao Ham. From ribbed globe lights to multi-colored lanterns, her team’s work adds a cheerful, whimsical energy. 

Architect Beth Kalin said the design team aimed for a sense of hominess, a priority captured in engagement sessions with staff, artists and community members. “They really wanted curves,” Kalin said. One room features a ceiling fixture that looks like a river — a potent symbol of the flowing ideas the organization has long nurtured. 

The center has raised $15 million so far toward the $18.5 million project, including $9 million in state and federal funds. Private funds include $1.5 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. 

Other PWC playwrights told me the building’s many meeting and writing spaces offer opportunities both to write and to nurture relationships with other writers. Many Voices fellow J. Isabel Salazar’s favorite spaces are “anywhere in the building where there’s space to just kind of write, but also still space to have friendship time.” 

Marge Buckley, a McKnight fellow, loves spending time in the Barbara Field library. “It’s a good little nook,” she said. “You can really curl up in there. It’s like a little cave.” 

Throughout the building, spaces brim with artistic possibility.

McKnight Fellow Gemma Irish, who is working on a play called “Eat the Rich,” said her role as a creative person, in part, is to imagine what’s possible. “I don’t know how to fix what is, but I do feel equipped to imagine what could be,” she said. “Part of what I hope to do here is dream really big, and create space for other people to dream really big.”

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The Playwrights’ Center hosts a variety of talks and performances. The following events are free and open to the public. Check out the links for information on reserving tickets.

Architects in Conversation: Producing Artistic Director Nicole A. Watson moderates a panel with HGA architectural firm’s Tim Carl, Peter Cook, Rebecca Krull Kraling and PWC’s Robert Chelimsky. Tuesday, October 7 at 7 p.m.

2025 PlayLabs Festival:

Fellows Showcase: Be the first to hear scenes from plays in progress by 2025–26 cohort of playwriting fellows. Saturday, November 1 at 1 p.m.

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