Young Playwrights Festival 2025 – 40th Anniversary!
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 are assigned a mentor to help them refine and edit their scripts before the plays are presented onstage.
Learn more about the Young Playwrights Festival here!
This year’s performance will take place on May 10th, 2025.
YPF Residency Program
Bring a YPF Residency to your school!
YPF features “in-school” residencies where BCS Teaching Artists partner with classroom teachers to develop original plays by young people across Maryland. Over 8 sessions, our professional Teaching Artists will work with K-12 classroom educators to facilitate lessons from our YPF Curriculum to guide students through the playwriting process with the goal of creating short, completely original plays that can be submitted to our annual Young Playwrights Festival competition. Students are given many tools to communicate their ideas, develop characters, write dialogue, and shape their stories for a unique opportunity we are so proud to continue to offer. Contact education@centerstage.org for more information on our in-school residencies.
YPF OPEN CALL
Write Your Own Play
Young playwrights all throughout Maryland are invited to write an original play using our official YPF Playwriting Guide and Coach Form. To maintain and uphold principles of accessibility with our programs, we continue to adapt our YPF curriculum year by year, and we offer it as a free online download for those who cannot host an in-school residency. Teachers and enterprising students across Maryland can register at the links below to receive the curriculum and implement it in their classrooms and/or follow it at their own pace individually.
Play Parameters:
Play must be no more than 10 minutes (8-10 pages)
Play must be between 1-6 characters (actors can play multiple roles)
The play must respond to this year’s theme
Writer’s Group
Baltimore Center Stage’s Writer’s Group is back and offering a FREE program for students in grades 3-12. For six sessions over the course of four weeks, these groups will guide students through learning about the different elements of playwriting using a slightly accelerated version of our longstanding YPF residency curriculum. Each session will build upon the previous one in the playwriting process, and by the end of the 4-week period, students will have written their own plays that they can submit to our YPF Open Call! The Writer’s Group is open to students from all over Maryland on a first come first serve basis.
We will have two groups this year, one which will take place in-person at Baltimore Center Stage, and the other which will take place virtually on Zoom. Each Writer’s Group has a cap of 10-15 attendees.
Through the support of our Teaching Artists, these Writers’ Groups can function as a supplement to any solo work a student does. Don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity for self expression and creativity!
Frequently Asked Questions
The Young Playwrights Festival (YPF) is a historic education program at BCS. The YPF Residency is a component of YPF, where one of our Teaching Artists will work hands on with you and your students through a fun and engaging curriculum to assist in the development of literacy, reading, and creative writing skills. Through 8 sessions, typically running the length of one class period, our Teaching Artists will work alongside you to help your students write their very own short plays.
Through the generosity of BCS’s donors and various grants, we are able to offer up to ten free “In-School” Residencies. In the scheduling process, we prioritize Title 1 schools in Baltimore City, and those that are explicitly set up to serve students with disabilities. We will be adapting our YPF curriculum and offering it for a free download online as well. Teachers or enterprising students across Maryland can download the curriculum and complete it themselves at their own pace.
For independent and private schools interested in signing up for our YPF In-School Residencies, the cost for one Teaching Artist to set up a residency in your school is $800.
Your residency will only be with your classroom. While the Festival portion of YPF will engage students from different schools, each residency will only include students from your class learning together with your classroom teacher and a BCS Teaching Artist.
Our curriculum works best with class sizes of 20-30 students. While there is no minimum number of students, please note that we are only able to offer about 10 YPF residencies this year, so class sizes will also be a factor in the selection process for school partners.
At this time, we are not able to provide technology to YPF Residency students. We will work with school partners to provide our YPF Residency curriculum through platforms that each classroom is using.
All young playwrights who participate in our residencies will be encouraged to submit their work for consideration in the 40th annual Baltimore Center Stage Young Playwrights Festival. Selected plays will be produced by BCS with professional actors, designers, and directors on May 10, 2025! The submission deadline for this year’s Young Playwrights Festival is February 7th, 2025.
If you’re interested in the Young Playwrights Festival Residency please fill out the residency request form, which you can find here: centerstagemd.wufoo.com/forms/baltimore-center-stage-ypf-residency-202425/
For best consideration, please aim to have your request for a residency to us by September 30, 2024.
This year we will offer 10 free in-school residencies. In the selection process, we prioritize Title 1 Schools, schools in Baltimore City, and schools with whom we’ve partnered in the past. We will also take class size into account when we select school partners for residencies.
All teachers or administrators who apply on behalf of their classroom, will be contacted with regards to the status of their application for a YPF residency.
The deadline for school partners to request a residency is September 30, 2024. The deadline for students to submit plays is February 7th, 2025. The 40th Young Playwrights Festival will take place on May 10, 2025.
Please contact us by email (education@centerstage.org).
We will have a virtual curriculum available for download for you to access and work through independently in your classroom(s). Please contact us at our Education email if you’re interested in receiving this digital version of our curriculum.
Yes! Please remember that the deadline to submit a script is February 7th, 2025.
