Young Playwrights Theater

YPT was founded by award-winning playwright, Karen Zacarias in 1995. After earning an MFA in playwriting, Karen returned to her hometown of Washington, DC. Seeking to use her art to impact her community, she began to teach playwriting workshops in DC Public Schools. Karen knew the impact creative writing could have on a young persons sense of empowerment from her own childhood experiences of using storytelling to cope with bullying by humanizing her bullies and imagining different endings to their interactions. Seeing how playwriting had a positive impact on students literacy skills, sense of empathy, and personal self-image, Karen was inspired to expand her work, incorporating YPT as a nonprofit in 1997. Since launching our programming in one classroom in 1995, YPT has grown steadily over the last 25 years to serve more than 1,000 young people ages 8-24 and 1,000 audience members in all eight wards of Washington, DC, and areas of Northern Virginia and Maryland annually. YPTs work ...