General Info

Regarded as a national leader in playwright support and advocacy, New Dramatists has remained a pioneer in the field of new play development since its inception in 1949. We offer our company of 50 playwrights a home base and self-guided laboratory for seven years, free of charge, in the company of their most gifted peers. Our playwright company is made up of emerging and mid-career writers that collectively embodies an artistic, cultural, ethnic, and geographic diversity rarely found in the American theatre. Sustained Support a seven-year commitment to the artistry and body of work of each resident playwright ; Peer Community the challenge and inspiration of a continuous community of playwrights each with the same seven-year residency about 50 at a time, more than 600 since our founding ; Creative Authority each writer leads his or her own years here, selecting what to work on when, choosing collaborators, setting timetables, and designing process. Work at ND is literally writer-led in order to fully empower them artistically and professionally ; and Artistic Home a building that includes two theatres, a classroom, a manuscript library of our resident playwright and alumni work, a private writing studio, and residence rooms for out-of-town writers. New Dramatists gives writers seven years of laboratory time. Each writer uses it differently, and our job is to create a Lab that is as flexible, inspiring, intensive, welcoming, and supportive as possible, in which the gift of time is matched by the quality of that time. We program over 125 events in the building each season, engaging with 425 collaborating artists and over 4, 000 visitors annually. The Playwrights Lab comprises our writer-driven readings and workshops series public or private, single-day or multi-week enabling playwrights to explore or revisit work at any step in its gestation. The Lab offers an array of programs that the playwrights can access freely in order to best suit their needs as artists, including: Play Readings our playwrights have unlimited access to program public or private one- to two-day readings with full artistic staff support ; PlayTime a two-week retreat in New York City for five writers to develop ambitious plays with a shared company of actors, directors, and other artistic collaborators ; Composer-Librettist Studio a two-week workshop in partnership with Nautilus Musical Theatre, CLS groups five writers with five outside composers and five singers towards developing new songs and enriching the collaborative process ;