NEW DRAMATISTS INC

Since its founding in 1949, New Dramatists has pursued a simple, singular mission: to provide playwrights with time, space, and resources in the company of gifted peers to create work, realize their artistic potential, and make lasting contributions to the theatre.

One of our primary goals is to serve as an artistic home for our resident playwrights, a safe space where writers can develop works at their own pace, under their own direction, outside of production timetables and the pressure of ticket sales.

Our commitment to playwrights is significant: seven full years of artistic support. The depth of this commitment is unparalleled in New York and the field-at-large. Within these residencies, writers have full control over their work and career trajectory. New Dramatists does not edit or curate residents' work; we do not charge residents for any benefits, nor do we passively participate in any works developed by residents.

New Dramatists fulfills its mission by seeking out and supporting a dynamic and diverse resident company of 50-plus playwrights, each of whom receive a free seven-year residency. Each year, 5 to 8 new writers are selected to join the company from an average application pool of 450 applicants and 5 to 8 residents complete residencies and become “alumni." With this yearly cycle of review, addition and graduation, our cohort of writers continually evolves, to reflect the field's range of new voices and their novel approaches to new play development.

Our resident company remains relevant, artistically outstanding, and extremely diverse, due to the strength of our admissions process. Founded by a largely unknown female playwright in 1949, New Dramatists has been built on the maxim that ALL artists of outstanding artistic merit deserved to be heard. We balance our transparent and rigorous review process with thoughtful outreach, to encourage a truly representative spectrum of new writers to apply for residency. An outside admissions panel that changes completely every year, a multi-layered review process, and a paperless application window help ensure that all applicants can easily apply, and get deep, thorough consideration. New Dramatists' staff facilitate this process but do not "vote" or have any say in the decisions of the admissions committee.

New Dramatists' seven-year investment in writers ensures deep, significant and lasting residency benefits for writers. With seven years of unconditional support, writers have time to fully explore new projects, meet new artistic collaborators or deepen existing relationships, and experiment with their new work processes. Our residency ensures lessons learned will deepen and enrich writers' voices over time.

Likewise, our commitment to charging no fees to participants, or charging admission fees for audiences, ensures that earned income streams will not factor into our writers' development of new works.

New Dramatists' is recognized as a field leader in the arena of artist support and new play development. Our veteran staff of 9, with a total of 121 years of service to the organization, brings considerable expertise to bear in the areas of artist advocacy, new work development, nonprofit management and fundraising. Led

The plays and musicals created and developed by our resident writers at New Dramatists garner interest from producers at an unprecedented rate. For example, of the total of our Creativity Fund and PlayTime projects of the last decade, over 60% have earned outside interest in the form of further development and productions. And in the in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons combined, over 700 separate productions of our writers’ works were produced, or planned to be produced (before the pandemic cancellations) in NYC, across the country, and even around the globe. Each year, these productions of our alumni and resident writers’ works reach a downstream local and national audience numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and impact dozens of nonprofit theatres, universities, and other producing entities, and provide opportunities for thousands of artists to perform, direct, and design productions of these works.

New Dramatists’ immediate and sustained impact on the field is strikingly evident over our seven-decade history. From the list of award-winning writers and projects, to August Wilson drafting "Joe Turner’s Come and Gone" during his commuting stay overs in 7th Heaven (our nickname for three artist garrets on the 3rd floor of the church), New Dramatists has enriched the field immeasurably with its blend of personal and professional support for resident playwrights. Our resident writers experience their work produced on stages across the country, including Broadway, and internationally at theatres such as The Royal Court, The Royal National Theatre of GB, Sydney Theatre Company, among others. Current playwrights and alumni have won 20 Pulitzers, 23 Tonys® (including 2017 Awards for BEST PLAY to alums J.T. Rogers for Oslo and BEST REVIVAL to August Wilson for Jitney), 81 OBIEs, 18 Drama Desk Awards, 8 MacArthur Fellowships, and 14 Susan Smith Blackburn Awards.

In 2001, New Dramatists received a Tony Honor for, “blessing the theatre with new and exceptional works that have assured both a rich theatrical heritage and future for the American Theatre.”