PLAYWRIGHTS PROJECT

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Grant Year

2025-26

Grant Program

Impact Projects

Award Amount

$21,500.00

Project Description

With the CAC’s support, Playwrights Project will implement a play development and production campaign to destigmatize the experience of incarceration, shed light on imbalances in the justice system, and celebrate our shared humanity. Teaching Artists with lived experience in the carceral system will co-facilitate playwriting workshops, engaging individuals who have returned home after incarceration and students at local high schools to gather writing about the justice system from multiple perspectives. Professional actors will perform plays at each site. Selected writing, along with work from currently incarcerated writers, will be devised together and presented in public performances at San Diego State University. After each performance, audiences will be invited to pose questions, process emotions, and reflect on the issues with a panel of returned citizens and experts in the justice system.

Organization Summary

Playwrights Project provides playwriting workshops in schools, communities, and correctional facilities, conducts the annual California Young Playwrights Contest for writers under the age of 19, and professionally produces community readings and full productions of Plays by Young Writers and The Mosaic Festival. Playwrights Project’s programs engage underserved populations in dramatizing stories drawn from imagination and life experiences, including reflections on the impact of poverty, incarceration, addiction, foster care, and military service. Recognizing that life presents difficult situations, forces beyond our control, and challenging decisions, the programs guide individuals to reflect on past experiences with compassion, create fictional plays that examine hardships, explore positive non-violent solutions, look forward to brighter futures, and celebrate the resilience gained by triumphing over difficulties.

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