YPT staff, board, and volunteers had a lot of fun visiting with our Takoma Park neighbors! Our booth stayed busy throughout the day, with tons of families participating in our Hermit Crab decoration activity! Want to decorate your very own YPT Hermit Crab? Download the activity sheet below. Then post your shell on Facebook or Instagram and tag @yptdc so we can see it! Download ..read more

By 2022-23 YPIP Playwright Elizabeth Shannon 2022-23 YPIP Playwright Elizabeth Shannon Working with Young Playwrights’ Theater and the Young Playwrights in Progress (YPIP) program has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my artistic career. My goal when starting YPIP was to transform my one-act play, Mama Bushwick is Dead, into a full-length.  I was so excited to be chosen as a resident artist, but also nervous to be working in such a professional capacity. I felt like a full collaborator and voice in the room rather than just a student. This was incredible, but made me nervous ..read more

By Actor Wendy Nogales It’s been a couple of months since embarking on my Silence is Violence (SiV) journey.   Reflecting back, I think about how special it was to have had the opportunity to really dive in and explore the massive cacophonous timeline that was and still is the COVID-19 pandemic. A time when folks were continuing to deal with their own personal journeys, while also processing life, death, political upheaval, a civil rights revolution, etc. For 3+ years, individuals, our families, our communities, our country, and the world faced something together and no matter how i ..read more

By YPT Program Manager Madison Chapman YPT Program Manager Madison Chapman reads over lines written by students in the Young Playwrights’ Workshop program. A school food fight turned murder mystery, college move-in day jitters, a spy mission, book characters coming to life, and a pizza dough machine walked into The Kennedy Center last month as original plays written by students in the YPT and DCPS Young Playwrights’ Workshop Program. It may be hard to picture, but it was magnificent!  Before joining YPT’s team in June 2022, I was a DCPS classroom teacher. I loved developing my relationsh ..read more

By YPT Communications Manager Cody Bahn As someone who has had very little interaction with the theater world until recently, I never imagined that something I wrote would be included in a performance.  Silence is Violence: New Normal was a “small step/giant leap” moment for me. I branched out and tried a lot of new things with this production. I started off testing submission forms and marketing strategies, and the next thing I knew, I was including my name in the “Playwrights” section of the program.  Silence is Violence: New Normal is a collection of work from YPT students, playwr ..read more

Great food, smiles, and laughs filled the night during YPT’s first Reels and Wheels drive-in movie fundraiser! With your help, YPT raised more than $18,000! Check out photos from throughout the night ..read more

The Silence is Violence: New Normal cast gathers with director Sandi Holloway in YPT’s rehearsal room. The night starts jovial, and the air is light. Actors arrive one by one, wearing masks and filling the small table and kitchen area at the YPT office in Takoma, DC.  Silence is Violence: New Normal director Sandi Holloway arrives and after short greetings, everyone finds a place to sit inside the rehearsal space.  “Alright, let’s get started,” Holloway says and the air in the room almost instantly changes. A sense of respect and seriousness for the actors’ process rushes into the ..read more

Thanks to you and the rest of YPT’s amazing network of sponsors, donors, and supporters we were able to raise more than $22,000, beating our Fall fundraising goal. With all of your support, we are able to continue providing programs, productions, and events for our students and community! Just hear what some of our staff have to say ..read more

YPT Program Manager Madison Chapman describes a drawing she made about her life experiences. As with any Renaissance, something new forms from what is left behind.  As YPT returned to fully in-person program delivery last spring YPT Education Director Jared Shamberger and Executive Director Brigitte Winter noticed a need for greater support for educators, who have struggled so much throughout the global pandemic, and for their students, who have experienced a lot of trauma and learning loss over the past few years. YPT’s program team had experience providing professional development work ..read more

As we reimagine and reshape what YPT will look like in the future, getting a past perspective can help give us a feel of where we’ve been and how far we’ve come already.  In her 27 years of service as the Director of the Fillmore Arts Center of DCPS, Pat Mitchell fondly remembers hiring one specific person integral to YPT’s history to teach playwriting to the center’s students.  “It became a miracle for these kids,” said Mitchell. “She had a way with them where she could just tell what they were thinking by how they moved.” That teacher was Karen Zacarías, founder of YPT. Zacarías st ..read more