Playwriting often begins in solitude: a writer hunched over a laptop or notepad, coaxing characters into existence. But a play doesn’t truly breathe until actors give those characters a voice. Only then – when words are spoken aloud and tested against an audience’s reaction – does a playwright know if the story works, stumbles, or deserves more blood, sweat and late-night revisions.
That’s where new play development festivals like Durango PlayFest come in. Across the country, there are more than two dozen festivals that provide a bridge between the quiet of the writer’s desk and the energy of live performance. Some are well known like the O’Neill Playwrights Conference founded in 1964, while others are quite new and smaller in scale.
