About PlayWrite

PlayWrite, Inc. is a nonprofit performance arts-based program that creates a safe space for youth at the edge to explore themselves in a new way and share stories that have never been written before. Through one-to-one coaching, PlayWrite helps at-risk youth build resilience, creativity, and confidence.

In multi-day workshops guided by trained coaches, participants write a one-act play using unique, non-human characters representing authentic emotions from their own life experiences. Each PlayWrite workshop culminates in a performance with professional actors.

PlayWrite participants, coaches, and performers express that putting feelings into language can be healing, restorative, and nurturing. The writing process can transform lives, and the opportunity provided to youth to craft an original play using our proven structure has a valuable impact.

The experience for many kids is challenging, intense, and at times uncomfortable. We guide them to push their edge, and the reward is often found through a voyage of personal discovery.

Learn more about Our Programs & Workshop Process.

Our approach

PlayWrite’s professional coaches and actors work one-on-one with workshop participants. We believe this is a key element to the success of our programs. The young people we work with come from traumatic, challenging, and economically compromised histories. By creating powerfully original art, PlayWrite participants become the writers and directors of their own stories and thereby can redirect their path. PlayWrite coaches support and guide the process, helping each participant stay focused on excavating their message. Our coaches are deep and active listeners who ask important questions and wait, as long as it takes, for answers.

We believe in the creative spark that exists in everyone.

Workshop participants learn profound emotional tools that foster greater self-trust, helping them to manage their trauma and, as a result, heal from it. We encourage youth to explore themselves in a new way and build stories that have never been told before from their own unique and creative resource.

PlayWrite coaches are dedicated to the process, never offering suggestions, words, phrasing, or ideas. This is why it works. Every action, word, and emotion must remain true to the writer. Each PlayWrite participant creates, reclaims, and owns their story 100%. We celebrate that.

Our Impact

PlayWrite workshops have been offered at alternative schools and organizations around the Portland metropolitan area, serving youth who have not thrived in the mainstream educational system. Online workshops allow PlayWrite to expand our reach beyond Portland.

Following a PlayWrite workshop, teachers and staff are asked to complete questionnaires for each student in their charge. Included are questions about observed changes in behavior that persist 3-6 months after the workshop.

School feedback from past PlayWrite workshops has stated that of those students who participated:

• 65% demonstrated improvement in class participation, were more willing to engage in conversation with an adult, and expressed ideas more clearly

• 59% had a greater sense of confidence in presenting their work to an audience,

• 55% were more persistent and remained engaged with difficult work

• Over 50% were better able to collaborate with their peers in creative work, ask for and receive help, and utilize creative outlets for expressing their feelings

• They expressed greater appreciation for others’ creativity and were significantly more willing to take on new assignments

Since its first workshop in 2004, PlayWrite’s impact has been supported by positive data and testimonials from teachers, counselors, and participants that reveal dramatic shifts in student behavior and development. Early support from the educational community helped PlayWrite secure foundational funding for an efficacy research study designed and implemented by the University of Oregon and the Oregon Health & Science University. The estimated lifetime cost of child abuse and neglect is $210,012 (Prevent Child Abuse America, 2012), while the direct cost of a PlayWrite workshop is just $1,600/participant. Support from donors and special events help make PlayWrite’s transformative work with young people possible.

Explore the Resource List below for insightful information.

My imagination grew bigger. All these different ideas come to my mind, more than they used to. Like, I get more creative. Once I start writing, I can’t stop. Before, I’d write, some ideas would come to me, here and there. But now when I write, I just remember, keep the pen flowing, you know?

— Student Participant

PlayWrite is a direct connect to the source of the craft, reminding us that our work is to listen and be present…PlayWrite reconnected me to the roots of my craft.

— Wade McCollum, Actor

Approximately 75-80% of the students who attend PlayWrite workshops have been exposed to childhood trauma, abuse, and neglect. Increasing evidence suggests verbal aggression and neglect may, over time, be more traumatic than physical abuse. A history of abuse disrupts a child’s ability to form trusting bonds, take in new information, and develop healthy coping strategies for stress.