Highlights

New Dramatists also opens our Lab programming so that writers can host—and lead—their own development process, while incorporating an organizational partner interested in producing the work. For the second season, with the support of the Venturous Theater Fund, was the Bucket List, which provides underwriting for the development of ambitious, large-scale, non-musical projects and which facilitates partnerships with theaters interested in producing them. We continued this program with two trilogies, so go the ghosts of mexico by Matthew Paul Olmos and the Liberian Legacy Trilogy by Cori Thomas. Each project benefitted from a two-week, 29-hour work session and public presentation.

Recognizing that playwright-producers can be a source of the most ambitious, bold, and 'impossible' works, the Venturous Theater Fund partnered with New Dramatists and 7th year resident playwright Andy Bragen to host a Creative Producing Summit on January 11, 2019. The conversation was began with a panel including artists who’ve worked in several different producing models, moderated by Andy, to build a conversation around firsthand experiences:

Consortium: Erin Courtney, 7th-year resident playwright and one of the founders of 13P; Susan Bernfield/Lynn Rosen/Peter Gil Sheridan (The Pool)
Writer-driven identity based companies: Sandra Daley (Liberation Theatre Company)
Writer-driven companies who produce own work: Andy Bragen (Andy Bragen Theatre Projects); Jorge Cortiñas (Fulcrum Theater)
Artist driven production companies/partnerships: Katie Pearl (Pearl/DAmour)

Plans are being made to host a follow-up convening in the 2019-2020 season.

This year marked a transition in our partnership with the Frederick Loewe Foundation, which previously supported an annual adjudicated award and week-long work session for a writer/composer duo.Beginning this year, the Foundation now supports multiple musical-theatre development opportunities annually, via the Composer-Librettist Studio and individual workshops. With the knowledge that they can keep working on these ambitious undertakings that require more time, space, and resources, the Loewe Workshops, which last 3-5 days, will allow writers to invest more time in research and development, and challenge themselves to break out of their creative comfort zones.

The recently established Opportunity Fund (supported by the Howard Gilman Foundation) and Lilly-Ruhl Fund (established by alumna Sarah Ruhl and The Lilly Awards) provided support to playwrights, in the form of reimbursement, for life expenses that often serve as a barrier to Lab opportunities. Supporting the costs of child care, hiring a substitute teacher to cover missed classes, or travel, these rather modest, individual reimbursements measure an impact far beyond the dollar value. Last season, with the support of the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Opportunity Fund was extended to our writers’ collaborators to cover the costs of child-care expenses when taking part in our extended workshops or retreats, and new this season we were able to extend the support to collaborators working in our 1-2 day readings.