Dedicated to the Playwright

Last holiday season New Dramatists set out to mobilize a #NewPlayCrew. Are you a passionate supporter of new work? Raise your hand. Do you want to add your name to the rolls of a group that isn’t afraid to say it cares about generative artists and it’s willing to put it’s name on that imprimatur? Stand up and be counted. It won’t cost you a cent (unless you’re feeling spunky enough to throw five bucks at us). This ND-organized horde would then be supplied with insider info only available to the #NewPlayCrew.  Read More

One of my all-time favorite play titles is Christopher Durang’s ‘dentity Crisis. It’s minimalist genius: the personal crisis, the dropped “I.” Well, it’s ‘dentity crisis time in the nonprofit theater, but this time the “I” that got dropped stands for ideals or, maybe, idealism. It stands for impulse, as in the original one, and individual, as in individual aesthetic, the thing that makes it possible to distinguish one institutional theater from another, which is now a bit like taste-testing brands of milk. In fact, to read Diane Ragsdale’s air-clearing report on a 2011 confab between producers from America’s commercial and nonprofit worlds, the “I” fell off somewhere back In the Intersection,that crossroads where the art theater meets the money one.  Read More

In the aftermath of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., playwright Caridad Svich put out a call to theater artists to submit short plays related to the intensifying debate over gun control. The instructions were rather demanding—not only did the pieces have to be between three and seven minutes long, but they had to be completed and submitted in less than 10 days. "This all happened fairly fast," she said.  Read More

During both 9/11 and the Marathon bombings I have been surrounded by children. In 2001, I was a nanny to four in Newton, and right now I’m a parent to two in Waltham. So after both of these tragedies — and after Newtown, Conn., too — my reaction to the violence has been to focus inward, to maintain calm, to keep up the routine of daily life.  Read More

New Dramatists proudly announces that we will honor entertainment lawyer and New Dramatists Chairman of the Board Seth Gelblum with our 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award at the 64th Annual Spring Luncheon tribute, to be held Tuesday, May 21 at the New York Marriott Marquis. Among those performing tributes will be Tony Award nominee Keith Carradine (Hands on a Hardbody, The Will Rogers Follies) and Tony Award winner Tonya Pinkins (Caroline, or Change; Jelly’s Last Jam). The event co-chairs are Roger Berlind, Roy Furman, and Barry and Fran Weissler.  Read More

I take my title today from that great triumvirate of American philosophers: Moe, Larry, and Curly, known in poststructuralist circles as Les Trois Stooges. With unerring precision they captured the complicated essence of American life—and by extension American theatrical life—in their expert revision of the motto of Alexandre Dumas’ three Musketeers: “One for all and all for one.” To which the incisive Curly added, “And every man for himself.” Yes that’s my subject, the one and the all, for each other and for themselves. In the spirit of the Stooges, I will digress whenever possible, including now, before I get to the point.  Read More