Mission Statement

Our Mission:

Philadelphia Young Playwrights taps the potential of youth and inspires learning through playwriting.

In executing our mission, Young Playwrights focuses on:

• Improving students’ writing, thinking and interactive skills
• Enhancing students’ sense of agency, responsibility and self-esteem
• Modeling new, effective ways of teaching
• Reaching students of diverse backgrounds and abilities
• Engaging students, their families and communities in the creation and production of theatre, while building new theatre audiences within these groups.

Our Values:

• Every student has something to say worth hearing.
• Collaboration among professional educators, professional teaching artists and students for the purposes of perseverance and transformation through playwriting.
• A strong commitment to serving students attending public schools in our city, in addition to those in suburban and private schools throughout the region.

Young Playwrights promotes literacy, creativity, problem solving, academic skills, motivation and self-empowerment for students with varying backgrounds and abilities in grades K-12. Students care about their stories, grow excited about the playwriting process and assume ownership of their writing. When students write about their lives, they are empowered to change them.

Young Playwrights shapes the way teachers teach by incorporating arts education into classrooms and across curricula. Introducing playwriting and theatre to new constituencies, Young Playwrights improves arts accessibility, fosters community and develops diverse, aesthetically-aware new audiences for the future.