The Young Playwrights’ Theater (YPT) 30th Anniversary Gala will raise essential funds for theater and creative writing programs for children, teens, and young adults across the DMV.

Founded in 1995 by award-winning playwright Karen Zacarías, YPT inspires young people to realize the power of their voices. Because everyone deserves access to a high-quality theater education, YPT provides theater and playwriting programs yearround that engage students in joyful, creative play, bolster their confidence and personal resilience, enhance their writing, communication, and collaboration skills, and develop young and emerging artists. In the theater, giving flowers is a gesture of appreciation and gratitude for an excellent performance. Since 1995, YPT has impacted the lives of more than 30,000 youth across the DMV, and our professional stagings of youth-written plays have reached 100,000 DMV residents. Our alumni have gone to be professional writers, performers, and leaders in their communities. Join us for a night of giving them their flowers!

On May 7, 2026, we invite you to join 150 community leaders, visionary sponsors, YPT alumni, educators, and artists, and a few surprise celebrity guests for an evening of food, drinks, dancing, awards, and celebration. Throughout the night, we’ll honor YPT’s:

Roots, the founding community members of YPT,
Gardeners, the artists, educators, and others who have cultivated and cared for YPT through both fallow periods and times of abundance, and
Blooms, amazing playwright alumni from the past 30 years.

Giving Flowers will celebrate YPT’s beauty and longevity, the resilience and necessity of art and art makers, and the ways that YPT’s history is inextricably entwined with the rich history and culture of Washington, DC. Join us in giving the YPT community their flowers! It is sure to be an unforgettable night.

About YPT:

Because everyone deserves high-quality theater education that centers their voices, YPT provides inspiration, tools, and opportunities for young and emerging artists to develop and share their stories. We prioritize young people who are targeted by systems of oppression, and we also collaborate with people of all ages who are invested in the ways that theater can transform lives and communities.

We administer customized, responsive educational programs, playwright-centered, process-focused productions, and other opportunities for youth and adults to develop creatively, personally, and professionally. Across all of our work, we center young people and their agency and adhere to our core organizational values of anti-oppression and antiracism.

We provide these opportunities in order to achieve youth development outcomes through theater education. We engage our students in joyful, creative play, bolster their confidence and personal resilience, enhance their writing, communication, and collaboration skills, develop young and emerging playwrights and theater artists, and create an arts-enriched world in which marginalized perspectives are valued and heard.

YPT believes that young people are inherently brilliant and we exist to share that brilliance with the world.

YPT's 30th Anniversary Giving Flowers Gala