"Plays and Playwrights" LAB 2001 - Directors Lab West 2001 was held from Saturday, April 7th through Saturday, April 14th, 10am-10pm once again hosted by the hosted by the Greenway Arts Alliance at the new Greenway Court Theatre. Lab 2001 also featured the new "Lear Project". Directors Lab West, in collaboration with Los Angeles Theater Center and Wordsmiths began developing, writing and staging four productions inspired by William Shakespeare's "King Lear." Rehearsals and workshops on the Projects were scheduled in the evenings during the week of the lab.The Directors Lab West produced projects expanded the idea of the Lab to create an arena for Director/Writer Collaboration and Development. The Lear Project was a mission dedicated to the creation, production and publication of new plays united by a common theme. The playwright/director teams worked together from inception to production in this process-oriented journey that uses classical text as a starting point for the creation of new works. For 2001, that classical text was William Shakespeare's King Lear. These were not adaptations. Instead these plays were interpretations derived from the themes of the source text. The plays are being guided through a structured four-tiered process: Creation, Workshop, Production, and finally Publication in an annual anthology with playwright and director journals. The collaboration and creation stages have begun for the Lear Project. In the evenings during the week of the lab, those playwrights and directors workshopped their pieces with Lab attendees. In the future, it is our hope that the resulting plays will be produced for fully staged runs and published. Guests from 2001 included: Luis Alfaro, John Beluso, Ernest Dillihay, Sheldon Epps, John Glore, Dakin Matthews, Kelly Stewart, Mark Valdez, Kim Weild, Lisa Wolpe, and Chay Yew.