“If you want to change the world, you have to have writers who are writing about the world,” says Robert Egan, the artistic director/producer of the Ojai Playwrights Conference (OPC). The conference, which has been supporting the development of new dramatic work for 25 years, features plays from a diverse group of playwrights who have the ability to articulate glitches in society and offer points of view with a potential to unravel our social knots. “We want writers who care and dare to talk about the relationships between individuals in this complex, disturbing thing we call social reality,” Egan says. This is Egan’s final year at the helm of the Ojai Playwrights Conference. In his 22 years as artistic director, the festival has grown to be one of the premier new play development programs in the country.
The conference is a two-week process that involves a week of play development for the writers, who read and discuss each other’s work in an environment of textual exploration and consideration. Playwright Bill Cain, whose new work, God’s Spies, will be presented at the OPC this year, calls the conference an extraordinary experience. “It definitely supports the improvement of plays, but the thing OPC does far, far better than any other festival is it supports the creation of playwrights. Because the playwrights talk to one another, listen to one another, give one another tremendous support. It breaks the isolation of playwriting … and that’s different from any other festival I know.”
In the second week, the actors arrive and the staged reading of each play takes shape, to be performed as the culmination of the festival (Aug. 11-14). Plays are followed by conversations between audience and artists that highlight impactful scenes and moments.
