07/11/2024
July 2024 marks the 10-year anniversary of an adventure that started in the living room of Brian Walker and has led to 35 writers helping each other develop 60 locally grown full-length plays. With the help and support from companies such as The Bard Theatre (then the Bard's Town), Louisville Fringe Festival, Looking for Lilith Theatre Company, Pandora Productions and hundreds of local actors and artists, we presented public staged readings of most of these works along with two festivals of fully-produced original full-length plays from Louisville playwrights.
Due to a need to focus on personal and other professional commitments by the team, there is no current or future plan to continue with new groups of writers going forward. We hope that our efforts have added something to the Louisville theatre community, and, even more importantly, that the development that we have nurtured in our space has allowed the many writers who worked with us to gain a deeper understanding of how their and others' plays work. We hope that they will continue to share that critical lens with the community to assist other writers and artists in realizing that we do not need to write in isolation, that even our most personal creations can be made better through community.
Thank you to Ben Gierhart and Clarity Hagan who have helped lead DCP these past few years. To Allie Fireel for stepping in to help guide our Season 3 writers. And of course, Brian Walker who co-founded Derby City Playwrights with me in 2014 and helped lead the group for 6 of the 10 years we've been around, including being the festival guru that made our two forays into full-productions possible.
This is not necessarily the final word on DCP—the future is, well, the future after all. We'll try to continue posting here and there, especially when our writers or plays have something to celebrate. Also, continue to watch our feed for the next few months, as ten years is still a big deal—even if it is an ending. We plan to revisit the plays we've worked on throughout that time. This is not just to celebrate the amazing writers and work but also to remind this community of the 60 plays by local writers that are available for our stages.
Thank you for letting us tend to this crop of plays in our community. Thank you for your support and for being in those spaces as actors, audiences, critics and creators.
David Clark
Derby City Playwrights Co-Founder and Co-Director
