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New Play Development

New work is the future of theatre, and this is where you’ll find in-depth content about best practices for its development, as well as pieces about specific work. Consider starting with the essay “Rules of Engagement for New Play Development” and Notes to the Note-Givers; or, Embracing the Paradox.” For musings on the power of new work, watch the video of Todd London’s keynote for the 5th Annual ORIGINKC: NEW WORKS FESTIVAL or read the transcript.

The Latest

Podcast
The Trans History Project: A Cohort of Playwrights and Theatres
by Nicolas Shannon Savard, Bo Frazier
19 May 2026
Podcast
The Trans History Project: Ten Plays in Development
by Nicolas Shannon Savard, Bo Frazier
12 May 2026
Podcast
New Threads, New Forms: MENA/SWANA Dramaturgy and Development
by Nabra Nelson, Marina Johnson, Evren Odcikin
7 May 2026
Essay

How the San Francisco Bay Area Affects the Playwrights who Live There

13 December 2016

Peter Nachtrieb talks to nine other Bay Area-based playwrights about their connection to where they live.

Essay

Submitting Like the Future Is Female

7 December 2016

Mya Kagan announces a new project: the Future Is Female Festival.

Essay

Storytelling With Funk Aesthetics

6 December 2016

A new play takes cues from funk music to explore bisexuality, biphobia, and polyamory in 1990s Brooklyn.

Essay

an interview with playwright Larissa FastHorse

23 November 2016

Dramaturg Deanie Vallone talks with playwright Larissa FastHorse about The Thanksgiving Play, writing a play with all white characters, and the obligation artists and institutions have to their area’s Indigenous community.

Essay

The WP Lab

20 November 2016

Five of the women producers from the 2014–2016 WP Lab report on producing the Pipeline Festival in partnership with a Lab playwright/director/producer team.

Essay

Making Room for Womanhood in the American Theatre

13 November 2016

Rachel Bykowski looks at Dana Lynn Formby’s American Beauty Shop and Kristiana Rae Colón’s good friday and asks: is it possible for women playwrights to tell truthful stories of the female experience and male oppression when men hold the majority of leadership positions in the American theatre?

Essay
11 November 2016

Playwright Jacob Juntunen remembers Edward Albee’s generosity toward other playwrights.

Essay
31 October 2016

In this first installment, Playwright Maggie Sulc shares her experience working and living in Canada, reflecting on successes and challenges.

Essay

Communiques from the LTC’s El Fuego initiative

24 October 2016

Irma Mayorga and Olga Sanchez introduce a new initiative from the Latinx Theatre Commons championing scholarship around new Latinx plays.

Essay

The Plot Thickens

18 October 2016

Two more of “Max’s” plays receive different responses than Mya’s did, leading her to affirm her belief that bias is at work in the submission process.

Video
Monday 17 October 2016
New York, NY, United States

The Lark in New York City presented Meet the Writers, the public kick-off event of the 23rd Annual Playwrights’ Week livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Monday 17 October at 7 p.m. EDT (New York) / 6 p.m. CDT (Chicago) / 4 p.m. PDT (San Francisco) / 23:00 GMT.

Essay

Part Two

16 October 2016

The second dispatch from Team Awesome Robot on producing independent theatre in New York City.

Essay

Community and New Play Producing

14 October 2016

In this piece, Triple Play project leads Tory Bailey and Brad Erickson respond to selections of a conversation between playwrights Laura Jacqmin and Jacqueline Lawton.

Essay

the Politics and Poetics of One Community Immersion Experience

13 October 2016

Karen Hartman describes the process of immersing herself in a community in order to tell their story on stage, in this installment of the Triply Play series.

Essay
12 October 2016

In this installment for the Triple Play series, Director of Community Engagement Leda Hoffmann shares Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s process for curating dialogue about new work with their audience.

Essay

Intimacy and the Aesthetics of Resistance

26 September 2016

Priscilla Page on Ricardo Gamboa and Sean James William Parris’ Space Age at Free Street Theater in Chicago, Illinois.

Essay

Dramatic, Present, and Human

10 September 2016

In this cultural moment of divisiveness, how is one of the true stories of abortion theatricalized? Holly Derr considers Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s co-production of Roe by Lisa Loomer. 

Essay

PlayPenn, The Ground Floor, and the National Playwrights Conference

31 August 2016

A conversation with new play leaders Sarah Rose Leonard, Paul Meshejian, and Anne Morgan about playwriting.

Essay
30 August 2016

Daniel Kelin describes the process of working on a play with a multi-racial and -ethnic ensemble playing characters from many different backgrounds.

Essay
11 August 2016

Shelby-Allison Hibbs on Kitchen Dog Theater’s productions of Steve Yockey’s Blackberry Winter and The Thrush and the Woodpecker.

Essay
7 August 2016

Carey Purcell looks at female artistic leadership of summer companies at New York Stage and Film, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, and Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Essay

New Saloon Theater Co. on MINOR CHARACTER

26 July 2016

Bertie Ferdman chats with New Saloon Theater Co. about their recent production, MINOR CHARACTER: Six Translations of Uncle Vanya at the Same Time at The Invisible Dog in Brooklyn, New York.

Essay

Feminism and Cole Theatre’s Latest Production

12 July 2016

Andrew Bailes on the critical reception of The Bachelors, written by Caroline V. McGraw and directed by Erica Weiss in Chicago, Illinois. 

Video
Friday 8 July at 2016
San Francisco, CA, United States

FaultLine Theater in San Francisco presented the world premiere of Oreo, Carrot, Danger; a play of rituals, by Nayia Kuvetakis, livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at HowlRound.TV on Friday 8 July at 7:30 p.m. PDT (San Francisco) / 9:30 p.m. CDT (Chicago) / 10:30 p.m. EDT (New York) / 23:30 GMT (London). Follow @howlroundtv and #howlround in Twitter for updates.  

Video
Sunday 29 May to Thursday 2 June 2016
Omaha, NB, United States

The Great Plains Theatre Conference livestreamed from Omaha, Nebraska on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Sunday 29 May to Thursday 2 June at 11 a.m. PDT (Los Angeles) / 1 p.m. CDT (Chicago) / 2 p.m. EDT (New York) / 18:00 GMT / 7 p.m. BST (London). Share your thoughts on Twitter with #howlround.

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