Playwright at Work

This was a weekly series of 10 half-hour programs produced in New York by the National Educational Television and Radio Center (the predecessor of PBS) in the spring and summer of 1961, each episode featuring a different young playwright as its guest. It would gradually be released to different blocks of public TV affiliates around the US over the next two years, the first batch of broadcasts - including Boston, Chicago, Houston, Pittsburgh, San Francisco , New Orleans, and Durham, NC - taking place on November 8, 1961. The program was hosted by a young Frank Perry; each episode began with his brief interview of the guest playwright, an excerpt of whose work would then be staged in bare-bones fashion by a young director of the playwright's choosing, followed in the end by a conversation between all three.