PRESS
New plays and local playwrights have never had it easy for attention. I try to highlight them whenever I can, and sometimes that includes my Next Rung program.
Here are some times Next Rung Productions had the spotlight.
"Next Rung Productions (nextrungpro.com) is an annual playwright development program mentored by yours truly. It’s built around the idea of year-long support for a local writer from their first ideas to their first public table reading. DG Member Jeannette Brown was the program’s first mentored playwright as she wrote her first full-length play in 2020, Mutation. Now that she has a different play called Cuba Libre getting a developmental stage reading in 2024 with TSC, she reflects back on her experience of writing Mutation. 'One thing that has stuck with me is the need to trust an idea and take it to the end before I begin tearing it apart. I can begin four more plays without taking one to a final draft.'"
"A Dramatist’s Guide to Knoxville" in The Dramatist magazine, 7/1/2024 - an article by Harrison Young
"As a playwright for the past decade and a half, one thing that’s been clear is that it’s a lonely difficult process between writing your first words on a page and getting it presented to the public. Most opportunities for playwrights are for already-created scripts that seek being produced…but what if you’re seeking help before you have a completed story? Or seeking help from before you even begin creating the story? It’s hard to always ask people for help who are both qualified and interested with these earliest stages. This is where Next Rung Productions comes in."
"Meet Harrison Young" in CanvasRebel, 11/3/2022 - an interview with Sarah Garcia
"I also mentor a local playwright each year through my Next Rung Productions program! This year Next Rung has got Sherridan Smee creating a play from scratch, and you can catch her play later this year when it’s complete. I teach other playwriting workshops along the way too. The goal’s to make things easier for writers now than it was for me when I first started writing, so it’s really rewarding to see people work hard for opportunities and then land them in really cool ways."
"Life & Work with Harrison Young" in Knoxville Voyager, 2/10/2022 -- an interview with Camila Sanchez
"A new playwriting program called Next Rung Productions provides playwrights a mentor as they create their next play. The first person selected in this program was DG member Jeannette Brown, a novelist who just reached an ending for her first full-length play: the unnerving Mutation."
"Ambassador Report: Tennessee – Knoxville" in The Dramatist magazine, September/October 2020 - an article by Harrison Young
