History and Leadership
Young Playwrights' Theater was founded in 1995 by Karen Zacarías. Now a Helen Hayes Award-winning Playwright-in-Residence at Arena Stage, Zacarías began volunteering her time teaching playwriting workshops in DC classrooms after returning to her hometown with a M.F.A. in playwriting from Boston University. By 1997, her workshops were so successful that she incorporated YPT as a 501c3 nonprofit organization.
In 2005, when Zacarías transitioned to Arena Stage, David Andrew Snider took over as Producing Artistic Director and CEO. Since then the organization has grown to employ six full-time staff members, eight professional teaching artists, and dozens of professional actors, directors and designers supporting its work on-stage and in the classroom. YPT provides thousands of students and community members annually with free in-school and after-school theater arts workshops and professional performances of student-written plays, and has created a continuum of programming at the Columbia Heights Education Campus through programming for students of Bancroft Elementary School, Lincoln Middle School and Bell Multicultural High School to gauge the long-term effects on students as they progress.
Snider followed Zacarías to Arena Stage in July 2012 as Director of Artistic Programming. Former Deputy Director Brigitte Pribnow Moore stepped in as Acting Executive Director and former Program Manager Nicole Jost assumed the role of Associate Artistic Director. YPT's staff operates out of the Josephine Butler Parks Center, adjacent to Meridian Hill Park in the Columbia Heights neighborhood and regularly stages performances at nearby Tivoli Theatre, a renovated 1920's Italian Renaissance Revival theater, now home to GALA Hispanic Theatre. The organization receives federal and private sector funding, as well as individual donations.
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