Launched in 2009, the Ethel Woolson Lab is an annual, 29 hour workshop series named in honor of a generous benefactor. The 2023 deadline for the lab is July 1, 2023.
UPCOMING EWL READINGS:
NO KISSING by Quintin Humphrey
December 18th, 7:30pm @Theatrical Outfit
A THIRD WAY by Lee Osorio
January 29th, 7:30pm @Theatrical Outfit
SALVAGE by Mary Lynn Owen
March TBA
THE ETHEL WOOLSON LAB IS WITHOUT A DOUBT ONE OF MY MOST FORMATIVE EXPERIENCES AS A PLAYWRIGHT. I will forever be thankful to Working Title Playwrights for working so hard to ensure that playwrights like me are supported.”
– Malcolm Tariq, WTP 2018 Ethel Woolson Lab recipient
Above: Graphics from the 2021-2022 WTP Ethel Woolson Lab by CupOfSeaDesigns
Up to four plays by WTP member playwrights are selected each year to participate in the Ethel Woolson Lab. Each recipient is given a 29-hour developmental workshop, culminating in a rehearsed, staged reading for the public. Each selected playwright is partnered with a support team of artists designed for the needs of the play and the playwright. This includes a dramaturg, a director, a stage manager and a cast of actors.
The EWL is Working Title Playwrights most in-depth development opportunity. Because the lab is an intensive process, WTP asks that the playwright take time off to spend the week dedicated to the script. Beginning in 2019, WTP has included a stipend for the recipient playwright, marking the 10-year anniversary of the lab.
The Ethel Woolson Lab selection process involves 5-7 panelists (reading blind) with Managing Artistic Director Amber Bradshaw. The recipient playwrights are selected by the panel.
WTP Playwright Malcolm Tariq speaks with dramaturg, Dr. Angela Farr Schiller and director, Cynthia Barker during rehearsal for the 2018 EWL lab YESTERDAY: TODAY. Photo credit: Danyale Taylor.
Something that really sets WTP apart from other companies is its deep commitment to nurturing a strong dramaturgical working relationship between playwrights and dramaturgs, this is evident in the really thoughtful structure of the Ethel Woolson Lab. Working on Malcolm Tariq’s play Yesterday:Today, I know firsthand how this unique laboratory provides a dynamic on-going collaborative experience between playwright and dramaturg that really functions to move ideas, inspirations, and a variety of dramatic forms closer to completion, ending with a lively and engaging night of theatre”.
–Dr. Angela Farr Schiller, Emmy® Award winning director, a two time Alliance Theatre Reiser Lab awarded dramaturg, Associate Professor of Theater at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee and WTP affilate dramaturg
Past Panelists for the EWL include industry professionals and previous recipients of the lab: Justin Anderson, Carlyn Aquiline, Freddie Ashley, Margaret Baldwin, Joanie Drago, Jordan Ealey, Sonhara Eastman, Daryl Lisa Fazio, Edith Freni, Christopher Hampton, Patricia Henritze, Dani Herd, Quinn Xavier Hernandez, Justin Kalin, Celise Kalke, Hank Kimmel, Enoch King, Sloka Krishnan, Damien Lockhart, Emily McClain, Addae Afura Moon, Lee Osorio, Nichole Palmietto, Natasha Patel, Theroun D’Arcy Patterson, Mia Kristin Smith, Rebekah Suellau, Malcolm Tariq and Matt Torney.
2022 recipients
2021 recipients
After Mariana sneaks out of her house in the middle of the night to meet up with Ryan, her alluring non-binary classmate, she is forced to face her mother’s fury and her own identity all in one night. Can Mariana entrust her mom with the truth? And more importantly, will the truth bring them closer together, or farther apart? Harina Pan is a coming-of-age story about queerness, Latinidad through generations, and the power of truth and love.
Wild & Free is about Creole Shop Owner Sydney Augustine’s persistent + peculiar call to relocate to southwest Georgia. Prairie Hills was the last place on earth she’d imagined she’d live, much less own a thriving cafe & bookstore or rare titles. Then during the summer after 45s presidential election, she realized that she’d not calculated what it would mean to be Black and successful in the tiny town. She never considered that living there would require unfamiliar levels of inner strength and depth. If she doesn’t adjust enough, this move to rural Georgia will become that last decision she’ll ever make.
Following a breach in quarantine, dying bookworm Gina and her equally-ill roommates find their already intense lockdown becoming even more stifling. She tries to find solace in community and representation by taking part in an online queer reading challenge. She quickly finds herself up against a shortage of asexual presence in her beloved literature; her violently deteriorating body; and her increasingly-restless friend Eamon, who has stumbled upon the possibility of freedom–freedom that he would give almost anything to have. IPHIGENIA IN QUARANTINE blends body horror, Greek myth, and non-standard queerness to create an entirely virtual theatrical experience.
In a hidden forest where extraordinary spiders are threatened by logging, a determined ecologist and a mystical spider keeper clash over how to save them. When a young poet hunting for refuge shows up, each decides the newcomer is key to her own plans. She becomes absorbed into the spiders’ world, discovering she’s transforming into a spider herself. As she enters the forest’s Web of life, she learns that saving it means one woman must die, and she will choose her. Web follows a young woman’s emergence into power through confrontation with herself and her part in the natural world. Web creates a clear eyed vision of ecological action rooted in resilience and hope.
2020 recipients
We lose 22 soldiers a day to suicide. Twenty-two men and women who have fought and survived only to return home broken and abandoned. Twenty-Two is an exploration of one woman and one man, both struggling with the aftermath of this unspeakable choice, and the hope they find in each other.
After the death of her mother, Faith spirals into a pattern of long drives and compulsive eating. Then Theo arrives. The strange and handsome new worker offers her hope that the future holds more than the soul-killing monotony of her small town and working in the Ingle’s deli department. But there is something lurking beneath the surface. When a girl goes missing, Faith must decide how much she is willing to sacrifice to keep her world intact. Alone in a park in the middle of the night, she has a decision to make.
So, a werewolf, a vampire, and a Frankenstein’s Monster walk into a doughnut shop… well, they do, because they work there. Tally, Louise, and Elsie run Sunshine Doughnuts, the cheeriest place in town! The monsters get more than they bargained for when they host an after hours party at the shop. It really sucks how much your past can come back to bite you.
2019 Recipients
When Tomei, a housekeeper at the The Border Motel learns that the policy of sanitization has resulted in her turning white, she tries to rally the other workers to fight against it. Written with elements of magical realism, Borderstone asks the question-what is the cost of immigrant assimilation to Western Anglo-Saxon culture?
A mysterious young girl plays in an inflatable pool that bridges the lives of Karen and Evelyn. Karen has wanted to be a mother her entire life, but bearing a child has proved more difficult than she hoped. Parenthood is the furthest thing from Evelyn’s mind. When Karen casts a spell to make her dreams come true and Evelyn suddenly comes face to face with an unexpected pregnancy, both must decide if they have what it takes to be called “Momma.”
A young female painter struggles to gain recognition for her work within the male-dominated art world of Renaissance Italy. Meanwhile, in the contemporary United States, a young career woman encounters her own version of the same challenges as she fights for recognition in the workplace. chiaroscuro or Slaying Holofernes blends and blurs the worlds of past/present, fact/fiction, and personal/political as it explores two women’s parallel quests for justice in an imperfect world.
2018 Recipients
Spring 1991. Theresa learns that the body of her husband, the victim of a racially motivated murder 40 years ago, has recently been discovered in the small Georgia hometown that she and her older sister, Sarah, fled. This news comes as an even greater shock to her middle-aged daughters, Lynn and Marie, who believed their father died under different circumstances. Theresa must decide whether she wants to risk facing past traumas by returning to reclaim the man the Jim Crow South took from her. As secrets unfold and power dynamics shift, this family of women must convince Theresa of the right thing to do.
Six years into her relationship with Paulie, Olive can’t help but wonder if things are growing stale because the chemistry literally isn’t there. What matters more in a successful relationship: biology or commitment? Somewhere in a dilapidated warehouse in Atlanta, a new kind of party is just getting started. Wear a t-shirt for three days, put it in a ziploc bag, bring it to the party, fall in love. An awkward olfactory inquiry into the nature of attraction, betrayal, and the quirky characters we meet in our quest to find true love.
2017 Recipients
At an African-American social club in Brooklyn in the 1970’s, Chief, well-loved bar owner and his brother Roland, fight to keep their doors open as reverse migration causes the thriving locale to morph into a ghetto. Despite the changing conditions and Roland’s desire to follow a new path, Chief and the locals fight to save their collective space. Through the support of community, they come to understand that the Club is more than just a bar; it’s a family that will never be forgotten.
In a sleepy suburban town in Texas, free-spirited Brady returns home to take care of her father, who has just had heart surgery. Brady wants nothing more than for her father to make a speedy recovery so that she can return to her guilt-free, unattached life – when she meets James, a young mormon on a mission trip to the Lone Star State. Brady and James discover parts of each other and parts of themselves as they ponder God, Armadillos, and the possibility of falling in love…while things fall apart.
In a surgical tent, on the front lines of a 30-year war, in some place arid and austere, some time – maybe now, maybe then, maybe much later – two isolated doctors use their wits, skills, and imaginations to keep the soldiers alive. In a battle with shrapnel and their own diehard senses of empathy, the doctors request desperately needed medic support. After years of fighting disease and infection, the women are soon faced with a new enemy: the world’s first male doctor.
2016 Recipients
When Things Are Lost takes us on a witty and surreal journey into the world of dreams as Andrew searches for the answers to his friend Michael’s disappearance. From a bus stop in Wyoming to a cafe in Paris, and a giant pink bunny guiding the way, Andrew learns about the power of friendship to deepen our empathy and open our minds.
Rick is a paraplegic ex-football player whose wife and young son are struggling to support him, despite his efforts to push them away. When the man who is responsible for his disability makes contact after 15 years of silence, Rick is forced to face his tormentor and choose how he will seek resolution for the past. Confessions of a Hit Man asks the question: What price do we pay for redemption?
Fasten your seatbelts and make sure your tray tables are in their upright and locked positions for take off. Now, prepare yourself for the ride of a lifetime! It’s 1963 and straight out of college Marsha takes her first job as a stewardess. Through the lens of her four decades in the sky, we witness the milestones of American history as Marsha lives them. Time Flies is a tour-de-force about making it through the decades, as only a woman can.
2015 Recipients
- Keester by Pamela Turner
- In the Garden by Amina S. McIntyre
- The Nightingale Rose or The Bitch of Balaclava by Patricia Henritze
2014 Recipients
- The Cannibals by Theroun D’Arcy Patterson
- Hush Now by Penny Micklebury
- Empty Rooms by Annie Harrison Elliott
2013 Recipients
- Death and Interior Decoration by Hilary Rogers King
- The Golden Glow Tea Room by Robin Burke
- Legacy by Barbara and Carlton Molette
- The Liar’s Child by Sharon Mathis
2012 Recipients
- Orbital Debris by Vynnie Meli
- Breathe Like a Bandage by Neeley Gossett
2011 Recipients
- American Dismantle by Theroun D’Arcy Patterson
- The Jew Catcher by David L. Fisher
2010 Recipients
- Anthony + Cleopatra UNDONE by Patricia Henritze
- Evelyn in Purgatory by Topher Payne
2009 Recipients
- The Birdwatcher by Johnny Drago
- Ladies in Waiting by Sherry Camp Paulsen
- Divided Among Themselves by Henry W. Kimmel
Working Title Playwrights 