DG National Report: D.C. by Allyson Currin
@dramatistsguild @allysoncurrin
There has long been an unsung hero for new play development in Washington, DC, Ernie Joselovitz, founder and director of The Playwrights Forum. For 35 years, the Playwrights Forum has provided development and support opportunities for hundreds of DC playwrights, in the form of classes, readings and, most importantly, small regular groups of playwrights that meet every two weeks to exchange work and provide guided feedback for one another. Many DC playwrights (including this grateful playwright) have benefited from Joselovitz’s strong dramaturgical insight and selfless dedication to honing the voices of DC playwrights. And it’s time for DC to say thank you.
Joselovitz sat down to discuss The Forum with me recently: “I was the resident playwright at New Playwrights Theatre with two year-long grants from the NEA (around 1980 or so). People kept repeating my Intro to Playwriting class, so I started an ongoing group called The Playwrights Unit. When Harry Bagdasian left New Playwrights Theatre, I asked him if I could take the playwriting program with me. I was in my late 30’s and I hadn’t run anything. I incorporated, formed a board of directors, started with an open-enrollment group: The Playwrights Forum. When I graduated with my MFA in Playwriting, there was very little constructive competent support. That’s the need I intended to fill. And I felt from the start that 1) The Forum would stay fully focused on the development of local playwrights and plays, 2) stay small enough for me to know every member, and 3) no playwrights would ever be prevented from joining because of cost.”
Which is exactly what Joselovitz did and has been doing ever since. His reach is wide and many successful playwrights credit his approach with their success and craft. Guild member Patricia Connelly says, “For those of us who have worked with him in The Playwrights Forum, he has been incredibly generous with his time, skill and professional advice. He has an uncanny ability to very quickly see what a play is about, figure out what’s working and what is not…I have always viewed him as someone with his sleeves rolled up, working in the trenches alongside the rest of us.”
Guild member Karen Zacarias concurs: “Thanks to Ernie, I am a playwright today. In his loquacious Ernie-way, Ernie taught us the structure of writing a play, but more than that, he modeled the art of being a generous, curious artist…He taught us that being a playwright is about constructing not only a play, but building a community and contributing to the healthy ecology of theatre.”
Joselovitz regards it as a victory that The Playwrights Forum has remained profoundly true to its original mission. “I saw the Forum from the unique perspective of a working playwright. But really, I got at least as much out of the Forum members, as a playwright, as I might have given.” When asked about anything he might have done differently, Joselovitz responded with typical modesty: “I wish I’d been more patient as a dramaturg in my early years. The playwright, not the particular play, is primary. The Playwrights Forum was formed on the presumption that we playwrights, would-be and being realized, are special, and deserve special respect and attention.”
Joselovitz is rightly proud of The Forum’s contribution: “Our budget has seldom run a deficit: that’s because we’re narrowly focused, I’m cheap, and I have depended on the extraordinary generosity of the theatre community.” Thousands of area actors have volunteered their time, directors have worked for small honoraria, and DC theatres and universities have generously offered free performance and workshop space: a true communal effort for nearly forty years.
But the end is in sight: Joselovitz is nearing retirement and plans to un-incorporate the Forum at the end of 2017, although he might maintain a few of the groups on an informal basis. He has already downsized the number of groups and newsletters per year. He doesn’t imagine a splashy finish for this institution that has been so fundamental to the trajectory of DC’s development into a new play hub. “Our start wasn’t so big, so I imagine our finish won’t be either.”
But Joselovitz may be wrong there: too many DC playwrights owe this extraordinary artist, mentor and community fixture far too much for a quiet good-bye.
