The Young Playwrights Festival is our longest running learning program that encourages expression and creativity in students across the state. Each spring, we invite and receive hundreds of play submissions from participants in our residencies, and many more from students across Maryland. Playwrights in grades K-12 submit their short plays, and each year up to six plays are chosen to receive a professional production produced by Baltimore Center Stage. All YPF playwrights whose work is chosen for a full production will receive dramaturgical mentorship to help them refine and edit their scripts before the plays are performed onstage.

This year’s theme is Hear the World, Heal the World: a hopeful imagination on the current world we live in, the many worlds we create, and the hope of a better future. This is a call for young writers in Maryland to take note of the world around them (or the ones they imagine) and write out their stories imagining ways to respond to what they hear. When you listen to the world, is it screaming, crying, whispering, or singing? Who do you think is listening? What elements would you identify as essential in the recipe for healing the world? What does healing look like to you?

This season, we are expanding our submission categories for the Young Playwrights Festival program so that young writers of different mediums can express their creativity in response to our open call. Young writers are called to respond to this year’s Open Call by submitting either an original 10-page/minute play OR an original 3-5 minute poem/spoken word piece responding to this theme. In addition to our 6 winning plays, 4 young poets will be selected to read/perform their winning poem during our festival.