The Playwrights’ Inn Project provides under served American playwrights with the opportunity to participate in a two week, all expense paid, play development process. Play development offers the playwright hands on collaboration with a director and the required cast of actors to revise, clarify and define artistic expectations and literary goals.  As an author’s imagination is fired by a cross section of human experiences and demands the  freedom to speak across literary boundaries, The Project encourages playwrights to develop work on any subject.

 The Playwrights’ Inn  Project’s initial season ran from September 5 to September 16, 2011 in the Nantes, France apartment of its Founder and Artistic Director, Lee Chamberlin. During the first week, skilled stage director Judyann Elder worked closely with the young, African-American playwright, Yusef Miller,  to focus on the structure and narrative of  Miller’s two character allegory, “This is About Sheep…I Think.” Writer and director were joined in the collaboration the second week by New York City based actor, Bernard Marsh, and bi-lingual, Paris based, French actor, Pierre-Benoist Varoclier. A public reading of the revised draft  took place on September 19, 2011,  at the Theatre de Nesle in the 6th arrondissement, or district, in Paris, France.

A frequent question about The Playwrights’ Inn Project is “Why Nantes?”

Nantes is a sophisticated, culturally stimulating, urban environment with the feel of open country tranquility known to appeal to writers. Lee Chamberlin, The Project’s founder, chose Nantes as a platform from which to introduce to large and small city European audiences the work of  talented, lesser known, American playwrights. Nantes is home to a branch of the French playwrights’ collective known as E.A.T. (Ecrivains Associes du Theatre) where an exchange of ideas and theatre experience is free to occur between American and French theatre authors who might not otherwise come together.

The Playwrights’ Inn Project’s second season takes place in two parts from June 4 to June 15, 2012, with a public reading in Nantes on Saturday, June 16, 2012,  followed by a second reading of the same play  on June 18, 2012,  at Theatre de Nesle in Paris.  The season’s second half  develops the work of  another playwright and runs from September 10 to  September 21, 2012, with a public  play reading in Paris, Monday, September 24, 2012 at Theatre de Nesle .

The Playwrights’ Inn Project created a partnership with The Kitchen Theatre Company in Ithaca, New York. Through this association, The Kitchen Theatre recommends traditionally under served playwrights whose work will benefit from  the play development process.  The Kitchen Theatre also provides a public reading to an American audience of  The  Playwrights’ Inn Project’s revised plays and makes possible the next level of  development.