New Play Development

Rehana Lew Mirza and Melinda Lopez talk being playwrights as well as actors and teachers, critiquing their own work, their individual work processes, and more.

Clare Hennessy discusses the challenges of developing a play that sheds light on eating disorders—depicting them accurately, avoiding triggers—and offers suggestions for other writers in a similar position.

Caridad Svich shares a correspondence she had with playwright and theatremaker Will Arbery, touching on topics of writing about bleakness and despair, a play’s relationship to breath, faith and faithlessness, and more.

Ezra Brain discusses the experience of creating a piece of theatre in the dark, the theory of “rasa,” the act of performance, and more.

Playwright and professor Theresa May talks about creating a show about the planet, Sky Woman, and the Youth Climate Movement, and how collaborating with students enhanced the development process.

Playwrights Kirsten Greenidge and Peter Nachtrieb talk about what it means to be an artist in residence, how theatres constantly work on their mission, connecting with the community, and more.   

Eric Marlin reflects on theatre’s ephemerality, connecting the notion to capitalism, technology, legacies, and more.

Ben Barson and Gizelxanath Rodriguez, part of the Afro Yaqui Music Collective, talk about artivism—what it means, what it can look like—in relation to building a jazz opera with various communities around the world.

Playwright Peter Nachtrieb and artistic director of San Francisco’s Z Space, Lisa Steindler, talk about the National Playwright Residency Program, getting out of your comfort zone, making a living as a writer, and more.

Jerrod Bogard talks about sexism, theatre, and unpacking his invisible knapsack.

Applications for the third round of the National Playwright Residency Program, an intervention into the traditional relationships between artists and institutions, are now live!

Roxanna Myhrum looks at the history of the iconic puppet show Punch and Judy and Sarah Nolen’s feminist adaptation of it, Judy Save the Day.

Andrea Kovich talks about the glaring need for more disabled theatremakers, the importance of new plays and musicals, and working with a disabled dramaturg during a new work’s development.

Playwright Vera Starbard (Tlingit/Dena’ina) reflects on her journey through rural Alaskan Native communities to reawaken the ancestral spirit of her work, Native Pride (and Prejudice).

Tita Anntares examines different ways of building empathy in audiences through two recent plays, The Courtroom and To My Unborn Child, and a panel discussion hosted by the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Daniel Jackson talks about creating an interactive DIY lighting system—that the audience partially controlled—for a recent production that took place almost entirely in the dark.

Theatremaker Callie Nestleroth discusses devising a show for a library space and shares the process she developed when approaching new site-specific projects.

Rob Onorato talks about boredom as an audience member, the uninspired play, what film has going for it that theatre does not, and more.