Launch Pad - UC Santa Barbara

"Risa Brainin assembled a brilliant cast of actors and a first rate production team at LAUNCH PAD 2017 to work on my play, Meanwhile There Are Letters. A week-long series of workshops culminating in two public readings was invaluable to me in stress-testing the script: gauging where it soared and where it faltered, shedding light on obscurity where needed and stripping back on repetition and over-emphasis, and above all, evaluating whether the play worked or not. Happily, it did! I found the experience profoundly rewarding, and would recommend it to any writer who wants to take their work to the next level."

- Declan Hughes, playwright, Meanwhile There Are Letters, Summer LAUNCH PAD 2017.

"For me, the LAUNCH PAD Reading Series offered another crucial partnership with new plays:  an intensive focus on a work in process with the commitment ON process. For my new play April 4, 1968: Before We Forgot How to Dream, we found imaginative ways to cast the play (across age, gender, and race) with a mix of students and faculty.  The public sharing was very well attended and I loved the sense from the audience that they were part of something special, something new, something never before heard before."

- James Still, playwright, April 4, 1968: Before We Forgot How to Dream

"LAUNCH PAD allows the play comes to life for the first time in a safe, genuinely collaborative environment. I loved working with a combination of accomplished theater artists such as Risa Brainin and Anne Torsiglieri, and their talented, dedicated students."

- Alison Tatlock, playwright, Untitled IV by Ruth Markofsky

"In my mind, this program creates the next generation of theatre artists, who are sensitive to the new play process and adept at helping draw out the writer's intent. LAUNCH PAD is one of the most exciting new models for new play development in the country because it gives playwrights a much needed opportunity to shape and explore text in the crucible of production... This work is often too risky and time-consuming for professional theatre, and so playwrights are often developing plays in the rarefied air of a reading series or a staged reading/festival. At UCSB, they actually do the play."

- John Walch, playwright, The Dinosaur Within

"The play has advanced more in the three weeks I have been here than it had in the three years I had worked on it on my own; something I attribute to both the sublime talents of Risa and the cast, and to their indefatigable work ethic and collaborative spirit."

- Sheri Wilner, playwright, Kingdom City