Everyone knows we have lots of lake cabins, Scotch tape and potlucks in Minnesota. But the Twin Cities are also a hotbed of something not as widely known: playwrights.

In large part, that’s because of the Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellowships, which attract writers and other artists with $16,000 grants that require them to live here for a year. A lot of the playwrights who come for that residency requirement never leave.

As the Jerome Foundation, which funds the grants, concludes its 50th anniversary celebration this month and as its president, Cindy Gehrig, prepares to step down after 38 years there, it’s a good time to ask how Minnesota became the land of 10,000 playwrights. In fact, was that the sneaky goal of the Jerome Fellowships all along?

“I don’t think it was a primary focus, but we’ve certainly been happy for it to occur,” Gehrig said. During her tenure, the list of playwrights who decided to stick around has mounted, including Alan Berks, Carlyle Brown, Steve Busa, Christina Ham, Carson Kreitzer and Jeffrey Hatcher.

“The reason we went to the residency requirement was because the Playwrights’ Center argued that one needed a good length of time for this sort of fellowship program — for reading, writing, development workshops,” Gehrig said. “We began to believe it wasn’t enough for someone to come from the outside for a month or two. They needed to move here so they could become part of the community.”

That community is a big reason writers who come here temporarily end up staying permanently.

“The community is huge for me,” said Berks, an Illinois native who came to the Twin Cities a dozen years ago for a fellowship. “We have a lot of actors and artists here who have made a conscious choice to forgo living in the spotlight. Like all the rest of Minnesota, they don’t care that much about buzz or hype, which is sweet and which means they focus on doing good work. I know people in New York do good work, too, but there, you also get caught up in ‘How am I going to climb the ladder of my career?’ ”

The Twin Cities also offers employment opportunities for those who stay. A lot of that has to do with Minneapolis’ Playwrights’ Center, which develops 50 to 70 new plays a year and is a model for other U.S. cities. It’s also partly through the auspices of foundations such as the Jerome, which also fund theaters.

“One of the most common things I hear when I go around the country is: ‘Oh, we need a center for playwrights in Seattle or D.C. or fill-in-the-blank,’ ” said Jeremy Cohen, the producing artistic director of the Playwrights’ Center. A transplant from Connecticut, Cohen thinks there is something uniquely Minnesotan about the community that has formed.

“The great artists we have here — Steve Busa, Kevin Kling, Steven Epp — are not just sitting around, waiting for someone to give them permission to make art,” Cohen said. “In some cities, the theater companies are the strength, but here, our strength is the artists. That’s what makes us special.”

Cohen has worked to steer the center toward finding more opportunities for playwrights to have their work staged. And Berks said he appreciates the variety of opportunities offered to playwrights once they get here.

“The Playwrights’ Center is great, but there are also a lot of opportunities outside of (it),” said Berks, a theater maker whose upcoming plays are being produced at St. Paul’s History Theatre and Park Square Theatre, as well as by Workhaus Collective, of which he’s a co-founder. He added that McKnight fellowships are also crucial in keeping theater artists here, as are lively university theater programs.

Ham, another member of Workhaus, noted that playwrights relocate to the Twin Cities for the same reason anybody moves here: because it’s nice and it’s relatively cheap.

“The productivity here can’t be replicated in New York or Los Angeles,” said Ham, who moved here from L.A. “That’s partly because they’re so much bigger — I’d be spending four or five hours of my day in a car in L.A. But when I first moved here, I was so excited that I could drive to Stillwater and write there. It’s gorgeous and it takes no time at all to get there.”

Same story, different coast for Dominic Orlando, whose “The Reagan Years” was just produced by Workhaus.

“There was a good solid five years where I was just sick of being in New York,” Orlando said. “They used to make fun of me at the Playwrights’ Center, because before I came, they claimed I was asking if there was indoor plumbing in Minnesota. And it’s true that I had an extremely coastal attitude at the time. But when I got here, I was so thrilled at the size of it. Every time I passed the sign that said ‘375,000 people in Minneapolis’ or whatever the number was, I would think, ‘Great! 7.5 million fewer people than I had to deal with in New York.'”

Orlando said it’s not even a tough decision for playwrights to decide to come to Minnesota, because they know they’re in a field that will likely require travel.

Ham estimated she’s received about $70,000 in various grants since coming to the Twin Cities in 2005 on a Jerome Fellowship. Her work has been produced around the country, and locally, she has received commissions from Red Eye Collaboration, the Guthrie Theater and Steppingstone Theatre. Next season, Park Square will stage her collaboration with Regina Marie Williams, “Nina Simone: Four Women.”

“I’ve been able to have a pretty fruitful and lucrative relationship with these places,” said Ham, who also coordinates the Many Voices program at the Playwrights’ Center and teaches at Augsburg College in Minneapolis. “It’s hard to think about leaving here now, because I know so many people and my level of engagement in the community is on so many different levels at this point.”

Berks knows a little about being engaged on many different levels.

“I met my wife (director Leah Cooper, with whom he subsequently founded arts website minnesotaplaylist.com) some time in that first year I was here, so that has something to do with why I’m still here,” said Berks, whose time in Minnesota can be tracked through 12 years and two houses. “I don’t know which came first: falling in love with Minneapolis or falling in love with my wife.”

In the end, a supportive creative network, the reasonable cost of living and the vibrant theatrical community contribute to what Berks said really keeps so many playwrights here (as well as other artists — this story could also be written about choreographers or visual artists). It’s the very “dynamic and evolving culture” the Jerome Foundation was established to foster.

“I have benefited immensely from the generosity of other artists,” Berks said. “World-class talent that says, ‘If I do that other gig that pays this much, I can afford to do these gigs that pay less.’ And that’s true of everybody from (actress and McKnight Theatre fellowship recipient) Sally Wingert, who’s probably at the top of the heap, on down. I don’t know if that is unique to Minnesota, but it is definitely Minnesotan, and I find it very attractive.”

What that kind of support — financial and artistic — means, said Berks, is simple: “It’s not just that you can afford to live here but that you can afford to do good work here.”

Cohen, for one, is predicting that — especially in light of the recent shift to new leaders at local theaters such as the Guthrie, the Jungle and Mu Performing Arts — the good work will get even better.

“We are literally on the verge of hitting this great renaissance for the Twin Cities,” Cohen said. “Moving beyond theater, there are so many amazing organizations here. I have a 12-year-old, and I always think, ‘Where’s the place I want him pickled, where’s the brine I want to raise him in?’ The answer always is that it’s a community like this, a community that understands how the arts can play a huge role in changing peoples’ lives.”

Chris Hewitt can be reached at 651-228-5552. Follow him on twitter.com/ChrisHMovie.