The Playwrights' Lab
Each resident playwright acts as the artistic director of their own seven-year new play laboratory, utilizing a menu of programming resources (at right) to pursue their artistic and career goals. Their Lab work is housed in a mindfully cultivated environment, free from financial and critical pressures, with guidance and support from a dedicated artistic programs staff who encourage expansive and strategic thinking.
Writers map their own journeys with complete creative authority. They are granted unlimited use of workspaces, access to a peer artistic community, and professional collaborators. They choose their own projects and design their own development processes.
All programming is provided completely free-of-charge to playwrights: New Dramatists does not participate financially in our playwrights' works. In fact, all writers and their collaborators are compensated financially when working on extended workshops in the Lab. In total, the projects that were developed through extended workshops this season engaged 115 collaborators and 18 playwrights, in 750 work days—totaling over 5,000 work hours.
Management of the Playwrights Lab is a central part of New Dramatists’ operations. Staff work closely with resident playwrights to provide the casting, stage management, directorial, and dramaturgical resources they need to generate, test, and realize their ideas. Staff also provide the business management required to run Lab activity, including payroll and "HR" support for hundreds of collaborators each year, the majority of whom are W-2 employees.
Please see the Lab Activity Report at right for a complete listing of new play projects and the collaborators who filled our workspaces throughout 2017-2018.
