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Polly Carl, who has served as artistic director of the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis for seven years, will leave the Twin Cities in September to take a job with Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre. The news is to be announced today.

The Minneapolis-based service organization serves as both midwife and research-and-development lab for new plays. During Carl's tenure, the group heightened its national profile, upped its annual budget from $600,000 to $1.4 million, and saw its member-playwright ranks swell from 200 to more than 900.

Carl shies away from naming favorite plays -- "They're all special," she said Tuesday. She worked on Craig Lucas' "Small Tragedy," which later won an Obie Award in New York in 2004 for "best American play."

A former political activist and labor organizer in Florida, the Elkhart, Ind., native moved to the Twin Cities in 1991 to work on a doctorate in comparative studies at the University of Minnesota.

She joined the Playwrights' Center in 1998 -- a year before completing her degree -- as development director.

She will join another Twin Citian at Steppenwolf. Managing director David Hawkanson formerly served in the same capacity at the Guthrie Theater.

ROHAN PRESTON

This article originally appeared in the Star Tribune and can be viewed at http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/onstage/45437582.html