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.
The Play Development Lab under the direction of Professor Denise J. Hart is part of the Howard University Department of Theatre Art's New Works Initiative, designed to offer comprehensive play development support to professional Black women playwrights. Through this program, Professor Hart aims to advance their creative processes, enhance their craft, and foster long-term careers.
The Lab serves as a vital resource for playwrights while also providing Howard University students with invaluable opportunities to engage directly in developing new plays that center on the Black Diaspora. Students will participate in various roles, from acting to stage management, fostering an interactive and collaborative learning experience.
The inaugural cohort for the 2024/2025 Play Development Lab includes six professional playwrights, two of whom have been selected as finalists. The finalists will each receive a developmental play reading, allowing students and patrons to witness the creative process.
The Play Development Lab is an essential step forward in creating spaces where Black women playwrights can hone their craft while also fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation for the ongoing development of the Black theater canon.
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.
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!
Michelle Tyrene Johnson, Finalist
I have to admit, I’ve never been a huge fan of the dramaturg experience. Too many that I’ve come across spend more time trying to deconstruct your play to turn it into something that you weren’t trying to write than in seeing the play you created. But not Professor Denise J. Hart. Not even close.
From my first session with Prof. Hart, I felt the full force of her respect for my play “40 Acres and a Laptop” which is probably the craziest play I’ve ever written. And I’ve written my share of stories bending time and space.
Prof. Hart created the best thing that a playwright needs - a safe space. It was a safe space from the questions she asked me about my play and then through all the sessions we had about it. I always felt her genuine liking for the play and her desire to make it stronger, tighter, and in better alignment with my vision of the play I wrote.
Our sessions never felt strained or uncomfortable. Rather I felt each session and “homework” assignment left me feeling inspired and invigorated to sharpen the story.
Also, a program that allowed me to fly out for a public reading at Howard University made the experience even better. Because that’s the real test of a play’s strengths and weaknesses, how it holds up before an audience.
My being able to also have one-on-one time to discuss, not just the trajectory of the play, but of my career was the full circle bonus of this opportunity. Because, let’s face it, it’s just not easy for a Black woman playwright of a certain age to be treated as if my work and my future are as bright and worthy as a youngster coming out of a nationally recognized MFA school or platinum playwriting program.
Feebleminded is my most ambitious play yet. I wanted to write a play based on a real-life event, seeped in history, with multiple characters, and told through the literary device, magical realism, because its use has fascinated me in other plays.
The play was originally developed with the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival Confluence Fellowship in 2021-2022. I was part of a small but mighty cohort of female playwrights. However, when the fellowship ended, I was left asking, what is next? I knew my ambitious play needed further development, but I did not know where to turn.
Prof. Hart notified me that she was launching the Play Development Lab and encouraged me to apply, and I am so glad that I did. It wasn't until my play was selected for the Play Development Lab that I was guided and encouraged to take Feebleminded to the next level through dramaturgical expertise.
Professor Hart's expertise as a dramaturg provided the insight that my play was missing. Through one-on-one personal sessions, she challenged and expanded my notions of what was possible for not only my play but for my career as a playwright.
The entire process of development was personal, collaborative, reassuring, and validating. This newer and clearer version of my play is a direct result of the Lab and the acting talents of the Howard University students.
Mildred Inez Lewis, Semi-finalist
I am an inaugural Play Development Lab semi-finalist who recently completed several sessions with Professor Hart. As a college instructor (Chapman University), published and produced playwright, I can truly say that the Lab is the most intellectually rigorous, culturally sensitive development process I’ve ever been a part of or seen.
Professor Hart may be starting another Charles Hamilton Houston legacy moment, but this time for African American playwrights. During these challenging times, our community need storytellers who can help us not only understand our challenges, but also help us conceive of a different, better world. An annual cohort of LAB playwrights will inform Howard students, spread Howard's legacy of excellence and impact the field.
I was honored to be a semifinalist in Professor Hart’s Play Lab. I am an Iranian-born, New York-based playwright, actor, and theater educator. My journey in theater began 25 years ago in Iran, where I worked with prominent theater makers. In the four years leading up to my immigration, due to socio-political constraints, I became part of an underground theater group. Those experiences were transformative, reinforcing my belief that theater is not just about entertainment—it is about disruption, reflection, and cultivating change through storytelling.
After twelve years away from my homeland and like-minded artivists, my experience in Professor Hart’s Play Development Lab was a powerful reminder of that artistic resistance and community. The depth of care and attention she brought to our conversations and play development sessions was unparalleled.
I did not have the opportunity to attend an academic program in the U.S., so I continue to refine my craft through constant writing, learning, and lived experience. Developing my play under Professor Hart’s guidance felt like an intensive semester in an MFA playwriting program.
I hope more students and artists will have the opportunity to be nourished by Professor Hart’s guidance, fostering a generation of playwrights and theater makers who create authentic stories that challenge perspectives and envision a world rooted in social justice and hope for change.
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 Black women playwrights face when creating new work and help them engage the professional theatre producing system.
In partnership with The LARK, Hart served as Play Development Dramaturge for Kofi Kwahule's Melancholy of Barbarians
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
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.
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
Dramaturge Consultant
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.
CLICK HERE to learn about Professor Hart's 2008-2017 play development program, Visiting Playwrights