Menu
The Lancaster Dramatists’ Platform (aka LDP or the Platform)
builds community through story, inviting writers of different experience levels, backgrounds, and identities to take part in each other’s process. We exist to support and encourage Central Pennsylvania playwrights. We do this by providing a friendly, structured environment for them to develop their craft, platforming their work through public readings, and connecting them to the national playwriting community.
As the Platform entered its 15th year in 2020, LDP launched its Core Playwright program, setting the course for the Platform’s future. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a shift to remote meetings, and while the new format presented challenges for reading plays together, it allowed nationally-recognized guest playwrights to join LDP members for conversations about their work and craft, connecting Lancaster-area playwrights to the larger playwriting community.
As the public health situation improves, and LDP works to reinvent its public reading series, we hope to introduce both Central Pennsylvania playwrights, and audiences, to the most innovative playwrights of our time by hosting nationally-recognized dramatists in our community. LDP members will be able to participate in the development of our guests’ work, observe them in rehearsals and workshops, and interact with them informally throughout their visits to Lancaster. We believe these connections will serve to grow and strengthen the local playwriting and theater communities in the years to come.
LDP was formed in 2005 to provide a platform for Lancaster-area playwrights to connect, share their stories, and develop their plays. The original group grew out of a community playwriting seminar taught by Julianne Homokay, who was a playwright-in-residence at Franklin & Marshall College and the Fulton Theatre.
The group began regularly planning and presenting public readings, giving member playwrights a chance to hear their words performed by actors in front of an audience. LDP also began its collaborative relationship with Creative Works of Lancaster, through which more than ten plays by Platform members have been fully produced. Several members also have written site-specific plays for Creative Works projects and participated in CW's annual event, The 24 Hour Plays: Lancaster.
In its 10th year, LDP members engaged in a strategic planning process aimed at building on its grassroots success. With many new members joining meetings, the group adopted a more structured feedback model. Readings and collaborations with CW continued. Plays developed with the Platform also have had readings and productions with other regional theaters and in venues across Pennsylvania and the United States.
Creative Works of Lancaster, a non-profit providing nomadic theatrical encounters in and around the City of Lancaster, PA, has been the Platform’s fiscal sponsor since 2010. By offering financial oversight and administrative support, Creative Works allows the Platform to operate as a non-profit under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and accept tax-deductible contributions while building organizational capacity. In short, CW gives us access to the shared resources we need in order to focus on our mission.
In turn, we support CW’s mission to nurture and promote creative opportunities throughout our community in order to provide exquisite moments of surprise and delight in an ever-challenging world. We appreciate their Pay What You Decide pricing structure, designed to ensure that anyone is able to access adventurous experiences that are unique, participatory, and push the boundaries of what “theater” can be. Opportunities to collaborate with Creative Works as artists has been an added perk for some LDP writers.
Creating a home for Central PA playwrights to develop their craft, share their stories, and build community.