About Play Club

Play Club is an intergenerational community of curious people who read and discuss plays by living Playwrights, then meet them in conversation.

You choose how you’d like to engage. Take part in discussions and connect with other members on the play’s themes and ideas. Or read the plays, skip the discussions and join the conversation with the featured Playwright.

  • Explore Plays: A play is featured each month, chosen by the featured Playwright. You’ll receive information about the play and Playwright ahead of time, with links to purchase or find a copy of the play.

  • Share Ideas: Monthly discussions of the play are facilitated via Zoom by Play Club founder and playwright Amy Wheeler. Join as many as you’d like to share your thoughts and hear from others, or come and listen in.

  • Meet Playwrights: The month culminates in a live Zoom conversation between Amy, the featured Playwright, and a collaborator they love working with followed by a free-flowing Q&A with Play Club members.

  • Go See Plays: we host meet-ups in cities to see plays together, and meet the cast and playwrights when possible.

Why Play Club Now?

Theatre takes place in a communal space, where we gather to explore ideas that are uplifting, thought provoking, inspiring and urgent. By joining Play Club, you experience the art of making theatre, and the playwright’s craft, from the inside. And, you support playwrights by buying their plays and becoming fans of their work.

founder & playwright

Amy Wheeler loves to bring people together to engage in conversation. A lifelong theatre artist, she’s experienced the powerful space the art form opens for dialogue, reflection and action. Play Club springs from her passion to champion playwrights, especially female-identified, non-binary, LGBTQIA+, and BIPoC theatre artists, and to inspire a growing audience for new theatrical work. Amy’s own plays are being produced and developed across the country, and published in Rain City Project’s Manifesto Series. She led the pacific northwest nonprofit Hedgebrook for 13 years, expanding it into a global community of influential women and non-binary writers authoring change in every sphere of arts and culture, politics and social justice. As a producer of Hedgebrook’s Women Playwrights Festival, she was thrilled to incubate hundreds of plays, discover exciting emerging voices and encourage renowned playwrights to explore new territory. Amy holds an MFA from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Cornish College of the Arts, and is an alum of Yaddo and Hedgebrook. She and her wife Kate live in historic Ingleside Hall, a circa 1909 dance hall, where they host play readings on the original stage.

communications & playwright

Paul Kruse tells Queer love stories. As a playwright and media artist from Western Wisconsin, his work flows from his Catholic roots and ever-evolving experience of family. He is a founding member and resident playwright of Pittsburgh’s Hatch Arts Collective, co-founded with Adil Mansoor and Nicole Shero. Paul often writes collaboratively, drawing from his years of experience as a videographer and documentarian. He is a cohort member of Audible’s third Emerging Playwrights Fund. His work has been produced by Adjusted Realists in Brooklyn, NY; Quantum Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA; the Vortex Theater in Austin, TX; and in high schools around the country. Paul has developed work at The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Yaddo, the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and Middlebury College. Paul recently completed his MFA at UT Austin where he was a fellow with the Michener Center for Writers. Learn more about paul at www.paulwkruse.com.