About the Artist

The Philadelphia Dramatists Center (PDC), was created in the early 1990s by Temple University Drama Department Chair, Dr. Robert Hedley, with support from the PEW Foundation and Minneapolis Playwrights Center. A smaller core group, led by Ed Shockley, was initiated to help writer members and local collaborative talent with networking, workshopping, and showcasing, as well as holding major conferences on craft and marketing.
Additional leadership over the years was provided by Kate Rindfleisch McGrath, Kali Colton, Jon Dorf, Michael Hollinger, Marian Warrington X, Thomas Gibbons, Dennis Moritz, and Annette Sanders. The organization also found friendly quarters at the Wilma Theater, Plays & Players, Society Hill Playhouse, Drexel, CEC, and local restaurants & bars.
PDC offers many thanks to the presidents and other board leaders who succeeded Shockley. Among them were: “Happy Hour” discussion leader the late Donald Drake, “Writers Circle” leader/treasurer Walt Vail, Secretaries Quinn Eli, Robert Ruelan, Anna Langman, and Rosemary Parrillo, “At Rise” facilitators, David Hodges, Michelle Pauls, Larry Beck, and newsletter editor David Hodges.
The organization also sends a special thanks to Dramatist Guild liaison, the late Marjorie Bicknell, and Richard Kotulski, for bylaws editing, and to Caitlin Cieri for navigating remote communication during the pandemic.
Today, the PDC continues under new leadership, but its DNA remains unchanged. It is still a place where dramatists gather to test ideas, hear their words aloud, and find collaborators. It is still a place where the city’s theatrical imagination is shaped long before it reaches a stage.
It is a story of a city that has always made its own culture from the ground up. A story about how a handful of writers — some young, some already seasoned — created a home for themselves and, in doing so, created one for everyone who came after.

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Adult Language

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