This Twin Cities stage for aspiring playwrights just got a lot bigger

For 46 years, Playwrights’ Center — the artistic launching pad of some of the nation’s most acclaimed playwrights — operated out of a former church building in Minneapolis’ Seward neighborhood. But playwriting is a team sport, and the Center was bursting at its rafters.

“It came to the point where we had to start saying no to things because we didn’t have the space to say yes,” said Robert Chelimsky, the Center’s executive director.

Today, PWC finally has the space.

At a grand opening celebration on September 20, visitors toured its new building — double the size of its old — in St. Paul’s Creative Enterprise Zone, a city-designated arts hub along University Ave., bordering Minneapolis.

In a space reclaimed from two vacant industrial buildings, performers offered what Producing Artisti