On April 2, Nicole A. Watson flew into the Twin Cities with a suitcase full of items to build a home and a pile of robust new plays. The Playwrights’ Center‘s new producing artistic director, Watson has proved over the past years a formidable presence in new-work development, bringing her brilliance and warmth to collaborators around the country.
In 2008, Watson transitioned from teaching history to directing plays, and her passion continues for education and what stories precede us. Originally from Jamaica, she’s directed and helped develop countless new works in New York City, D.C., and the Twin Cities from writers like Lloyd Suh, Jocelyn Bioh, Daniel Alexander Jones, José Rivera, Pearl Cleage, Dominique Morrisseau, Charly Evon Simpson, Francisca Da Silveira, and Tim J. Lord. Watson, an alum of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and the Women’s Project Directors Lab, is now a beacon to other up-and-coming directors, teaching at the Kennedy Center and beyond.
As associate artistic director at Round House Theatre in Maryland and at the McCarter Theatre Center in New Jersey, she championed the Adrienne Kennedy Festival with its digital library of plays. At the McCarter, she launched The Toni Morrison Project, a commissioning opportunity in partnership with Princeton University. She also co-curated the virtual new play reading series Bard at the Gate, started by Paula Vogel during the pandemic. Time and time again, Watson has applied herself to innovating process, uplifting writers, and exploring our relationships to story and history.
Her next step feels poetically fitting. Since its founding in 1971, the Playwrights’ Center (PWC) has helped launch the lives of exciting new plays and nurtured iconic writers like August Wilson, Martyna Majok, Marcus Gardley, and Qui Nguyen. Watson succeeds Jeremy B. Cohen, who served in the role for 14 years. At the helm while the organization expands into a new space in St. Paul’s Creative Enterprise Zone, Watson will oversee the PWC’s many fellowships, residencies, and resources, which serve a grand total of 2,500 member playwrights worldwide.
Though she has lived in the Twin Cities previously, her greatest priority lately has been listening deeply to the local community, staff, and affiliated artists. Early in her tenure, Watson sat down to share insights ranging from how she lets process inform process to her particular excitement about what PWC can inspire in the American theatre. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
GABRIELA FURTADO COUTINHO: I’d love to give you the opportunity to talk about the past few years leading up to this role. You’ve become a very prominent voice in cultivating new work, which feels especially important right now amid dwindling development opportunities.
NICOLE A. WATSON: It has been a really interesting and fruitful time. In the midst of Covid, instead of losing a job, I got a new one. Going to the McCarter to be the AAD was really exciting because it allowed me to continue my Adrienne Kennedy Festival that I was doing with Round House. It helped give Adrienne’s and all those artists’ work an even larger platform, because it [covered] D.C., New Jersey, and a digital share-out that could be seen anywhere.
I got to spend about three years at McCarter and got to work on Bard at the Gate with Paula Vogel, which was one of those things that she birthed during COVID, and Sarah Rasmussen had the brilliant idea of how to find a home for this. Creating a digital library of plays that people have access to is really exciting; I think we would do well to remember that putting things online is a form of access. Yes, I want people to be in physical spaces—and not everyone can be in those physical spaces. If we want to talk about audience building and the next generation of theatregoers and -makers, of theatre lovers and shapers, you also need to talk about access.
I think I’ve fine-tuned my commitment to new work and want to expand that. I am a director because living playwrights gave me work. That is how my career started. Nobody handed me Shakespeare. Nobody handed me Ibsen. Nobody handed me a play by someone who’s not breathing. I’ll figure out this next chapter at the most perfect place to support living writers, the Playwrights’ Center.
This is the best reason to move again. I can’t think of another place I want to be. The American theatre is an ecosystem, and I’m really happy to be a part of it. I’m really grateful for the people who have helped steward and shepherd my own artistic career, and now I get to do that in a new way for other people.
That’s beautiful. I would say you truly are a director with a very national influence, not only because you’ve moved around, but also because of all the digital work you’ve done well. It’s hard to crack that code of cool digital theatre experiences. What lessons do you feel you gained in those processes?
The digital medium is interesting, because everyone wants to be like, “It’s not theatre, and it’s not film, but what is it?” It’s another mode of communication and artistic practice. If you treat it as such, then you figure out what is possible in that medium. Jared Mezzocchi ended up working on all the Bard at the Gate plays and really helped figure out how this is different. We became excited about this as another version of the staged reading that was available to more people.
I think Bard at the Gate has been a testament to what it means fundamentally to be an artist who wants to be in process and practice with other people. At the end of the day, I am still heartbroken over what has happened to our field and this country and the things we did and did not talk about over the past couple years. Also, seeing people make work and teach classes and do things online was a testament to the ways in which artists figure things out. I never want to make light of how awful that time was, but I also think, in awful moments, sometimes there are little glimmers of light to get us through to the next moment.
That really resonates—the sentiment about new-play development and theatre as a microcosm of human striving. It’s human work, society work, figuring-things-out work. It must be really rewarding now coming from the McCarter going to PWC and also being able to cultivate those relationships in person. Would you like to share a particular story or moment perhaps from conversations with playwrights that lit you up?
I flew here on April 2nd on a very, very early flight, and Matthew Paul Olmos was workshopping a play. Matthew is one of the first playwrights I remember seeing a piece of theatre by, at PS122. I remember thinking he was so interesting, and we got to work together at New Dramatists many years ago. I’ve been such a deep fan and friend, even though we are so rarely in the same space. It felt so special and marvelous that he was here when I started my time. I got to hear a new play of his, and we got to sit down for two hours that evening just talking about our experiences and process.
Getting this job is sort of like getting a backstage pass. Now I feel like I can walk up to a playwright and talk—it’s a little bit like you have sort of the keys to the kingdom in some way. It’s just really special.
At the Playwrights’ Center, we have a public season, but at the end of the day, Playwrights’ Center does over like 75 developmental processes a year. And I’m like, Who gets to say that? That’s pretty awesome! Especially in a moment where our new-play development centers are closing and shifting and theatres are trying to figure out how to balance their budgets and still pursue new work.
It still seems like those conversations feel incongruous. But I think there’s a real question about budgeting, pursuing the work of artists around you who need sustainable jobs, who can help you build your communities, who can be in real conversation with you. That is valuable. And this struggle is about how to make those things work together.
Absolutely. It’s sad that when it comes to budgeting and downsizing, often new work and education are the first to get hit. Do you feel that you have specific aspects you look for in a healthy new-work organization? As you transition into your role, are there particular organizational values that guide you?
Having over 2,500 writers affiliated is why I’m here. There are an infinite number of stories to be told, and we will never, ever finish telling all those stories. Yet our responsibility is to put as many stories out there as possible in the way that they demand to be created. Jeremy Cohen talks about the Playwrights’ Center as an artist service organization, as do many of the staff here, and that is something I really love. Really what the Playwrights’ Center is about is supporting the many people, the human beings who wear that playwright hat, asking, What is it that you want to write? What is it that you need to be the kind of artist that you want to be? When any director here is working on a new play, any dramaturg, any actor, they’re not in process with the pages. They are in process with the writer who is sharing out those pages, who is asking questions.
That’s what I’m most excited by—that, and the staff is amazing. As I got here, PWC kicked off Play Labs, our public festival featuring three plays and sharings of all the fellows. I was like, Oh my God, I have the best job in the world, to have playwrights come up afterwards and talk to the staff and say they got what they set out to do. I’ve worked at many theatres across the country with either a full-time job or as a freelancer, and finding that time and space for a whole host of reasons can be hard. The responsibility of Playwrights’ Center is to be an artist-centered organization that will help support writers to become, to write what they want to write. Full stop. Not many organizations get to say that’s what they want to do.
This will have its other challenges: We don’t sell tickets. On the one hand, I don’t have a ticket sale responsibility, but we don’t have income from ticket sales. I think it’s a fascinating and wonderful time to be at this organization. I think PWC can be a little lighthouse in this moment of figuring out, of being in process—not just organizationally, but all of us, these communities that make American theatre.
I love hearing that you don’t need to necessarily race against time for product and let process and discovery lead the way. What are some specific things so far at the very beginning of your time at PWC that you hope the industry could learn from or glean?
How can we have a more robust conversation around, what are the obstacles to any theatre in new-play development? My preference is always to try and have the hard conversation. We are still afraid to do that sometimes. But if I tell myself, I’m literally not doing brain surgery, we can try and have this very difficult conversation, because it’s just a hard conversation. I’m not holding anyone’s heart in my hands. Maybe metaphorically, but I can treat that with care. I think that the great failure of this country is its unwillingness to have hard conversations.
I’ve watched writers have time for their writing days, the actors have showed up game for the challenge. I think, on some level, because we’ve made a very conscious choice to really ask, How could you use the time best? The needs guide. No one has unlimited time and unlimited resources here, but because we have centered the conversation around the needs of the playwright, because I don’t have an agenda to get that play ready for an imminent opening night, the playwright can own the work, sit down, and evaluate how we can support them, be it with a draft, or evaluating who the script is for, etc. Where are you in your process, and how can we help with this time and these resources that we have to offer you?
The lab series here is really for pieces that are in their nascent stages. In other readings, they’ll be close to a final draft and need it to put it in front of an audience. Other playwrights will come in to do their workshops and go, I don’t know that I want to open up the final sharing. And other playwrights will say, Yes, I want a final sharing and a talkback. One of the artists here was workshopping a piece about motherhood, and it was important to them that all of the actors involved were mothers. In supporting that artist’s curiosity and process, it allowed Playwrights’ Center to find artists for whom that was a part of their lived experience, who wanted to be involved in that conversation.
We can very specifically address playwright interests. We are definitely not a one-size-fits-all place, and I do think that adaptability is a really important feature.
How do you hope to see the organization fed or nurtured? What are some pathways for continued success, or hopes you’re bringing?
On some level, we are a sort of research and development place, whereby 75 projects are researched and developed here. We employ a lot of artists both here in the Twin Cities and guest artists from out of town. Another big thing is the Playwrights’ Center is getting a new building. At least in this little corner of the world, the Playwrights’ Center is growing. Jeremy and the staff have done incredible work with artists and gotten to a place where they say, we need a new home, we’ve outgrown this one. I’m joining in the moment when that’s coming into reality. What we need across the board, I think, are people who will band together to creatively dream something into the world.
My hope is that, at some point down the road, there’s a new building in St. Paul that has been supported by the Twin Cities, that has been supported by the government here, supported and embraced by the local community. I’m excited to get to know my new neighbors. Playwrights’ Center is a place that is deeply rooted in the Twin Cities and also invites people from across the country and world to come meet us here.
I don’t want to say I don’t have specific dreams, but it has been really important to me as I start my time here to just do really deep listening. Playwrights’ Center doesn’t need me to reinvent or reimagine it. What it needs is for me to steward all the good work that has already happened and be a really thoughtful, creative thinker about what else is possible as we grow, and how does that growth help us continue to live into our values as an artist service organization.
What I’m also thinking about is: We are not like theatre in other countries. When we want to talk about hopes for community-based theatre, we need to consider this country’s fragmentation. I am seeing younger people and people of color at the theatre. I have to believe that if you expand your choice of programming, and think about how you practice being welcoming because that has to shift as well, at some point you will expand who comes into the building. One of my wishes for all of us is that we figure out how to really think about the communities that are important to us in a multi-generational way.
This is a vibrant artistic community. The Twin Cities are no joke when it comes to artistic support and artistic funding. I went for a walk around one of the lakes, and I already ran into people who love the Playwrights’ Center. That is so exciting, what this company means to people. At the same time, we will still have all the other challenges that everyone faces: How will we grow our support and our community? How will we figure out how to move into a new space that will have more challenges and require more of us? I don’t know yet, but we’re all figuring it out, and I don’t have to do it alone. I have some amazing thought partners here to work with. I joined a community that has many concentric circles. My work now is to hopefully become another part, another member of this community.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t have ideas and secret wishes and dreams, but I can’t yet share them with you today. You’ll have to come back in a year and visit!
Gabriela Furtado Coutinho (she/her) is the Chicago associate editor of American Theatre.
