New Play Development

"All Our Tragic," adapted and directed by Sean Graney and produced by The Hypocrites at the Den Theatre in Chicago, features all thirty-two surviving Greek tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides compiled into a single twelve-hour epic. It includes seven intermissions of varying lengths and a vegan feast of Mediterranean food is served throughout. The result is rather like a contemporary version of a Dionysian festival.

All theater is local. That is what is inspiring and instructive about the National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere, as opposed to the notion of a "national tour.” In the case of "Yankee Tavern", this is a very political play (hidden inside a thriller structure) and so the politics of each city/community were engaged in differing ways. I was most strongly involved in the productions at Florida Stage and Curious Theatre Company—but followed the feedback in the other theaters as well. All of this info was crucial to me when I then directed a subsequent production at ACT Theatre in Seattle.

The nerves about future productions depending entirely on the success of this first one are wiped away. It just pushes all of the anxious noise into the background. A lot of times the idea of taking chances has much more to do with design choices and how things are realized that might seem tiny to other folks, but can really influence the storytelling.

It was instructive to watch the same comedy handled by different casts and directors, each offering different rhythms and approaches to the same comic beats. It is startling how fragile comic material is. It was a tutorial for me in that regard, watching that unfold. Drama is not quite as fragile as comedy is. Something as delicate and important as rhythm/pacing can radically alter everything. Drama can take that change more easily than comedy can.

Jonathan Mandell writes about the second Theater: Village Festival in NYC.

What I imagine the greatest impact of the National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere was to "End Days" was the buzz, publicity, approval it got before it even started. I do think it's a play with broad appeal, but I can't flatter myself that it would have had over fifty productions world-wide without that kind of launch.

The "Playwrights, Rewrites, Multiple Productions Series" is a weekly series of interviews examining the process of developing a new play through a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere as a part of their Continued Life of New Plays Fund. Visualizations are from HowlRound's community-powered New Play Map.

Trista Baldwin offers an overview of Workhaus Collective.

I remember very clearly when it suddenly hit me—that I could see it and experience it for myself—that the play would have a future life. And that happened because I was able to take part in and see three productions of my play, one after another, in different cities with different audiences, and be part of the reaction.

Rebecca Stevens interviews playwright-poet Marcus Gardley on his impacts on the national performing arts community. 

The Playwrights, Rewrites, Multiple Productions Series is a weekly series of interviews examining the process of developing a new play through a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere as a part of their Continued Life of New Plays Fund. The series is produced by Thea Rodgers and Emma Weisberg. Visualizations are from HowlRound's community-powered New Play Map.

Patricia Davis reviews Hub Theatre’s Abominable, by Helen Pafumi, discussing how the play looks at violence and bullying.

Evan Caccioppoli interviews IRT’s Artistic Director Kori Rushton.

Cory Hinkle reviews Mickey Birnbaum's Backyard, which used wrestling both literally and metaphorically to create "lurid storytelling" 

The Playwrights, Rewrites, Multiple Productions Series is a weekly series of interviews examining the process of developing a new play through a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere as a part of their Continued Life of New Plays Fund. The series is produced by Thea Rodgers and Emma Weisberg. Visualizations are from HowlRound's community-powered New Play Map.

Brant Russell writes about The World's Fair Play Festival in 2014 at the Queens Theatre, which premiered 12 short plays about the 1964 and 1939 World's Fairs, where those fairs happened.

The Playwrights, Rewrites, Multiple Productions Series is a weekly series of interviews examining the process of developing a new play through a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere as a part of their Continued Life of New Plays Fund. The series is curated by Thea Rodgers and Emma Weisberg. Visualizations are from HowlRound's community-powered New Play Map.

Alice Stanley Jr. reviews Chris Danowski’s endofplay/7, a wild ride of gender exploration, narcissism, and longing

Dani Snyder-Young writes about Generation Sex, a devised piece from Teatro Luna looking at misogyny, violence, Latina identities, modern femininity, and more.

Patricia Davis interviews DC-based director Stevie Zimmerman, discussing casting, directing styles, and the challenges of new work.

The Welders is a new DC-based playwrights’ collective whose mission is to establish an evolving, alternative platform for play development and production. Over the course of three years, the collective will produce one play by each of the group’s five member playwrights and then give the entire organization—website, checkbook, and audience—to a new generation of artists. In a periodic series of articles, members of The Welders are going to be reporting on the collective’s experience in an attempt to share knowledge with (and learn from) the broader theatrical community.