Dan LeFranc

Alumni Playwright

2008 -- 2015

Dan LeFranc received the 2010 New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award for Sixty Miles to Silver Lake, premiered by Page 73 Productions and Soho Rep. His play The Big Meal received its world premiere at American Theatre Company in Chicago, where it was declared the “#1 Play of 2011” by Time Out Chicago and garnered five Joseph Jefferson Award nominations. The Big Meal received its off-Broadway premiere at Playwrights Horizons, where it picked up a Drama Desk nomination and four Lucille Lortel nominations, including for Outstanding Play. His most recent play, Troublemaker or The Freakin Kick-A Adventures of Bradley Boatright recently premiered at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Dan’s other plays include Backyard, Bruise Easy, Catgut, The Fishbone Fables, In the Labyrinth, Kill the Keepers, Night Surf, and Origin Story.

Dan is currently working on commissions for Yale Rep, South Coast Rep, and Playwrights Horizons. He has been recognized with the Helen Merrill Award and the Whitfield Cook Award, plus a Djerassi Resident Artists Program Fellowship, a John C. Russell Fellowship, and two MacDowell Colony/Alpert Foundation Residencies. He is a member of the MCC Playwrights Coalition and New Dramatists, and a former member of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. A graduate of the MFA playwriting program at Brown University, Dan served as head playwriting instructor for the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium and visiting faculty at Brown, SUNY Purchase, and Yale University, among others.

Sixty Miles to Silver Lake and The Big Meal have been published by Samuel French. The Big Meal also appeared in TheatreForum, McSweeney’s quarterly food journal Lucky Peach, and the Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays, edited by Sarah Benson.

Dan is currently the Playwright-In-Residence at Playwrights Horizons.

ND Activity

Composer-Librettist Studio
Composer-Librettist Studio
Our annual Composer-Librettist Studio focuses simultaneously on music-theatre development and the principles of collaboration, teaming five writers with five composers and five performers to develop brand-new works of musical theatre. At the end of the Studio, each playwright has worked with each composer and 25 new music-theatre pieces have been created by the group.
Creativity Fund
Creativity Fund
The Creativity Fund blends the flexibility of a one-day play reading with the intensive focus of a two-week workshop, providing ten to fifteen playwrights per year the opportunity to program three to five day workshops on an ad hoc basis. Creativity Fund workshops are structured according to each writer's needs at any stage of development and are funded through a lead grant from the Andew W. Mellon Foundation.
Nocturnal Commissions
Nocturnal Commissions
Nocturnal Commissions is a marathon evening of instant theatre, New Dramatists style. First, the opportunity to commission new plays by New Dramatists resident and alumni playwrights is auctioned to the highest bidder; second, the writer and their winning bidder meet for a lightning-fast commission; third, each writer has about 20 minutes to create a new short theatre piece, monologue, or song; fourth, the plays are rehearsed upstairs while the audience has dinner downstairs; and last, all the evening's commissioned pieces are presented by a first-rate company of actors and directors.
Whitfield Cook Award
Whitfield Cook Award
The Whitfield Cook Award goes to one New Dramatists playwright each year for an unproduced, unpublished play deemed worthiest by an outside panel of judges. The purpose of the award is to provide financial assistance to New Dramatists resident playwrights to encourage and reward their talents in the art of playwriting.
Writers' Executive Committee
Writers' Executive Committee
The Writers' Executive Committee is a voluntary grouping of resident playwrights who meet throughout the year to discuss and make decisions concerning the work of New Dramatists and to help guide the organization.