Playwrights' Center head moving to Chicago

Polly Carl ran the new-play development center in a seven-year growth period

Star Tribune

Last update: May 20, 2009 - 5:50 AM

Polly Carl, who has served as artistic director of the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis for seven years, will leave the Twin Cities in September to take a job with Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre. The news is to be announced today.

The Minneapolis-based service organization serves as both midwife and research-and-development lab for new plays. During Carl's tenure, the group heightened its national profile, upped its annual budget from $600,000 to $1.4 million, and saw its member-playwright ranks swell from 200 to more than 900.

Carl shies away from naming favorite plays -- "They're all special," she said Tuesday. She worked on Craig Lucas' "Small Tragedy," which later won an Obie Award in New York in 2004 for "best American play."

A former political activist and labor organizer in Florida, the Elkhart, Ind., native moved to the Twin Cities in 1991 to work on a doctorate in comparative studies at the University of Minnesota.

She joined the Playwrights' Center in 1998 -- a year before completing her degree -- as development director.

She will join another Twin Citian at Steppenwolf. Managing director David Hawkanson formerly served in the same capacity at the Guthrie Theater.

ROHAN PRESTON