Our History
PlayWrite Founder Bruce Livingston had the spark of an idea for PlayWrite when he attended a workshop about teaching children to write plays in 1996. The workshop was led by Daniel Sklar, author of Playmaking: Children Writing and Performing Their Own Plays. Inspired by what he’d learned, Bruce established PlayWrite, Inc. in November of 2003. The first workshop took place February 2004, thanks to a generous donation.
Within its first decade, PlayWrite built partnerships with Portland-area schools including Portland Night High School, Mt Scott Learning Center, New Avenues for Youth, Cedar Bough, and Bienestar.
Teachers and staff at these partner organizations attributed several effects to participation in PlayWrite’s workshops. Many kids showed a marked improvement in verbal and written communication skills. They were more willing to participate in projects, eagerly taking on fresh challenges and volunteering for new tasks. And they seemed to work better in collaborative situations. PlayWrite’s impact was clear.
The PlayWrite Program
PlayWrite’s evidence-informed curriculum was developed around a robust and diverse body of research including:
The Urban Institute* analysis of effective intervention programs published in 2000
The work of James Pennebaker* and colleagues regarding the long-term effects of writing with feeling about significant emotional events
Extensive research by Mary Main* and colleagues on attachment patterns and narratives of childhood
Allan Schore’s* proposed connections between early relational trauma, compromised emotional regulatory function, maladaptive child-rearing practices, and adult mental health.
*Visit our Resource List.
PlayWrite Today
Bruce Livingston retired as Executive Director of PlayWrite, Inc. in December 2020, handing over the reins to our current leadership team. Together with our dedicated board of directors and pool of professional coaches and actors, PlayWrite’s mission continues.
PlayWrite has touched and transformed the lives of hundreds of youth in the two decades since its inception. The organization has been recognized for the depth and quality of its unique programming. It continuously demonstrates a robust and creative ability to realize its vision: To Transform.
In 2021, PlayWrite began working with Portland Public Schools summer programs to reduce gun violence. We have partnered with the Migrant Education Program (MEP) to work with Hispanic teens, often children of farm workers. And we mentor Native American youth who have been referred from tribal communities across Oregon.
We invite you to learn more about our PlayWrite Programs and Support our effort. You can help make a difference!
A sense of pride and purpose
PlayWrite provides opportunities for students to think of themselves as truly creative people who are being celebrated by professionally creative people.
— Aaron Balough,
Mt. Scott Learning Center
Youth at the Edge
When sharing about the students PlayWrite serves, Founder Bruce Livingston began to feel terms like “disadvantaged,” “at-risk,” “underserved,” “marginalized” were overused and disempowering. So, he convened a group of kids and said, “Okay, guys, here’s the deal. Can you come up with a phrase that works for you?”
And in a short time, they did: “We’re Youth at the Edge,” they told him.
It’s exactly what they are. Kids at the edge, not able to thrive in the mainstream education system. It describes them individually and it describes adolescence—which is clearly at the edge. And it describes art. Art comes from the edge—of our artists, our community, our society.
It was a perfect fit all around.
Using theater to transform the lives of at-risk Portland youth
“They believed in me and what I could write. They really pull stuff out of you.”
“Pulling stuff out of you”: in essence, that’s the mission of PlayWrite. Founded in 2003 by Bruce Livingston — whose extraordinary career includes teaching in Iran during the late sixties and up until the 1978 revolution — PlayWrite set out to teach the craft of playwriting to struggling students, including those coping with abuse and trauma. . .