Supporting Visionary Storytellers...
The Play Development Lab offers play- development support for black women playwrights to advance process, craft, & career.
Denise J. Hart, an Emmy nominated award winning playwright, dramaturge and director has created an intensive play development opportunity for professional black women playwrights to develop their work through one-on-one meetings, table work and rehearsals with a cast of actors and developmental readings.
CLICK HERE to read about Professor Hart's previous play development program, Visiting Playwrights 2008-2017.
PDL Leadership
Denise is an award winning playwright and dramaturge. As a play development dramaturge she has partnered with the Lark Play Development Center/NYC to bring international Ivorian playwright Kofi Kwahule's work to the US, Black Girl You've been Gentrified by Nichole Thompson Adams, Nothing to Lose by Denise J. Hart and supported a number of emerging playwrights through partnership with the Playwrights Forum/WDC and through the Visiting Playwrights Series where she helped develop the work of Nikkole Salter, A. Peter Bailey, Peter Harris, and Elizabeth Bruce. She has shared her expertise on WDC's Fox 5 TV & WJLA/ABC News and with Ford's Theatre "Written Then, Spoken Now" on CSPAN, Studio Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre, The August Wilson Society, Arena Stage, Mosaic Theatre, Howard University and Hatiloo Theatre in Memphis TN.
Production dramaturge and audience dramaturge credits include: Rhyme Deferred, Black Nativity, Jitney (recipient of the 2019 Memphis Ostrander Award for Best Production), Flyin' West, Milk Like Sugar, Sweet Charity, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Day of Absence (Kennedy Center ACT Festival Outstanding Acting Ensemble Award), Zooman and the Sign, Malcom, Martin & Medgar, Breath Boom and the DC Queer Festivals' productions of Quick Stop at the Florist and Secret Mist of the Blue.
As a scholar dramaturge/presentation coach, for six years, Denise coached internationally recognized scholars, artists and activists for appearances on the Lone Star Emmy nominated Blackademics TV, which airs on PBS and reaches over 3 million households.
She served as the 2021 & 2022 Howard Entertainment Faculty Externship recipient at Amazon Studios where she worked in Drama Development and Limited Series Drama Development and contributed to some of America's favorite TV shows!
The Count - Data Don't Lie!
2015 - in this year, the Dramatist Guild in collaboration with the Lily Foundation started gathering statistics on production of plays in the American Theatre by gender, race and several other categories. The statistical publication was named, The Count. One statistic that stands out in the 2015 findings was a paltry 3.4% of women of color were produced playwrights.
2017 - during this year of data gathering plays produced by women of color rose to 6.1%.
2019 - during this year the data is no longer broken down by gender and race. Thus, the plays produced by women and men of color are lumped into a BIPOC category. Plays produced by BIPOC writers was 24% compared to 76% of plays produced by white writers.
2024 - the Play Development Lab has been conceived to support the advancement of underrepresented BIPOC women's voices in the American Theatre landscape. Supporting women playwrights with an intensive developmental process will offset some of the challenges BIPOC women playwrights face when creating new work and help them engage the professional theatre producing system.
Some people call it risk we call it regard for truth
Play Development Lab is the lab of choice for Black women playwrights. We develop plays people talk about and want to see. We do this work because playwrights' have a role in today's social revolution by telling stories that help us be less cog and more creator. We believe in stories that respect humanity, individuality and community. Stores that help us build something better.
Sample of Denise's Previous Dramaturgy Projects
In partnership with The LARK, Hart served as Play Development Dramaturge for Kofi Kwahule's Melancholy of Barbarians
Play Development Dramaturge
Rhyme Deferred written by Kamilah Forbes
On Friday September 29, 2023 at Howard University, Al Freeman Environmental Theatre Space, dramaturge, Denise J. Hart moderated the "Never Thought it Would Last" dramaturgy talkback for the production of Ryhme Deferred written by Kamilah Forbes.
Guest panelists were Coordinator of Art History, Dr. Melanie Harvey, Coordinator of Fashion Design, Elka Stevens, Hip Hop archivist Tim Jones, Hip Hope Cultural Curator Priest and actor Greg A. Reid. Priest and Reid were original members of the team who supported the creation of the play at Howard University.
Dramaturge/Director
In celebration of his books To Address You As My Friend: African American Letters to Abraham Lincoln and A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House, Ford’s Theatre is proud to present an unprecedented book talk with acclaimed Lincoln scholar Dr. Jonathan W. White, historian Dr. Edna Greene Medford and dramaturg Denise J. Hart on February 2, 2024. Blended with their conversation, we will feature letters and excerpts of the books read aloud by actors, followed by a book signing. Experience the convergence of history and theatre, as we bring to life previously unheard African American voices of those who wrote letters to Lincoln and who visited him at the White House.
“The edited collection of letters to President Lincoln, many of them never published until now, illuminates the fears and desires of Civil War-era African Americans as they dealt with the problems of the day and the uncertain future that awaited them.” ~ Dr. Edna Greene Medford
Dramaturgy Panelist
The Ford’s Theatre Legacy Commissions will serve as an artistic incubator for stories about social justice and racial history and explore the varied experiences of underrepresented characters and lesser-known historical figures and their contributions to American life.
Taking Center Stage: Under-told Stories in the American Theatre
Production Dramaturge
Howard University
Dramaturge Consultant
Shakespeare Theatre
Staged reading of Paule Marshall’s 1960 Television Drama adaptation of her novel, Brown Girl Brownstone at Shakespeare Theatre Company. Working with Dr. Drew Lichtenberg (Shakespeare Theatre Company, Resident Dramaturg) and Dr. Soyica Colbert (Associate Director at STC, Lorraine Hansberry Radical Vision author, Georgetown University Professor of African American Studies and Performing Arts). Reading will be held at staged reading at The Klein Theatre
Dramaturge/TV Pilot Writing Consultant
2/8...Nichole Thompson-Adams and Epoch Films present a live-reading of the pilot episode of their podcast. BLACK GIRL YOU’VE BEEN GENTRIFIED details the harrowing yet hilarious ironies of the precarious life Thompson has built: selling brownstones to rich white folks in her native Brooklyn as she struggles to keep her kids in elite “progressive” schools in Manhattan. Moderated by Kimberly Drew and Michaela Angela Davis.
Memberships
CLICK HERE to learn about Professor Hart's 2008-2017 play development program, Visiting Playwrights