Admissions

Any playwright who resides in and has the legal right to work in the United States may apply for the 7-year residency at New Dramatists as long as they can meet the submission requirements of 2 full-length plays and a biography or resume.

All resident playwrights are required to show documents for I-9 form verification; these documents will be reviewed (as necessary) throughout a writer’s seven-year residency.

Please note New Dramatists is not in the position to be a visa sponsor.

What and How to Submit?

It is in your best interest to gather the three documents required to upload to the application—your bio/resume and two "blind" scripts—early in the window, and submit your application in one session. Please do not wait until the last day.

1. To Begin Your Application, visit this page: http://newdramatists.org/admissions and click the button to “Begin Application” which will be available at 10am EDT on Monday, July 22, 2024.  You will be able to continue working on an application in progress until you complete the final step to “Submit Your Application”, at which point you will no longer have access. The application window closes at 11:59pm EDT on Monday, August 5. Applications will not be accepted after the window closes. 
2. Follow the prompts to Confirm your Eligibility
3. Enter Your Contact Information.
4. Upload Your Current Playwright/Artistic Bio, Resume, or CV
5. Upload “Blind Copies” of Two Original Full-Length Works (Plays and/or Libretti-books of musicals). Each submission must be a single work that constitutes a full evening of theatre. For example, a 90-minute play without an intermission is a full-length work.
   • Please do not put any identifying information in the script documents. Identifying information includes: your name, contact information, production/development histories, awards, your agent, special thanks, hyperlinks, actors/production team, etc.
   • Please include a character list at the beginning of your script document.
   • Every script page must be numbered.
   • Every script page must include the play’s title.
   • Scripts must be in PDF format. 
6. Supplemental Materials – You may submit music samples to accompany a libretto to showcase the style and tone of the larger work. You may submit up to five tracks.
7. Submit Application
   Read and agree to our privacy policy. Click “Submit Your Application”. After you complete this step, you will no longer be able to make changes to your application. Once your application is submitted, you will receive an automatically-generated confirmation email.

PANELISTS: Over the course of ten months, from September to June, a seven-person panel, comprised of New Dramatists’ current resident writers, alumni playwrights, and outside theatre professionals, read the submissions. The panel is completely different every year. Special efforts are made to balance the panel in terms of aesthetic sensibilities, gender, race, ethnicity, geography, and age, as diversity is crucial to the adjudication process. The only people who know the panel members’ identities are the New Dramatists’ admissions staff.

CIRCULATION: All applicants submit two full-length works and designate an “A” play and a “B” play. All “A” plays are read in the initial round. As applicants advance through the process, their “B” plays are read. For the Initial Round, reading is blind, i.e., applicant names are not attached to the plays being read. In the Semi-Final and Final Round, names are disclosed to the readers. (In addition, each current resident playwright has the option to recommend one applicant who is guaranteed to have both the “A” and “B” plays read by different readers in the Initial Round. This does not impact the applicant’s status.)

DECISION-MAKING: The panel meets three times between January and June to discuss the plays and, by consensus, winnow the list of applicants and ultimately determine the incoming group.

NOTIFICATION: Status notifications are sent on a rolling basis: the first round of letters goes out in February. The second round of letters goes out in April. We will also email finalists and request artistic statements from them in April, with a late May deadline. The final round of letters goes out in June. Writers who are accepted into New Dramatists are notified in June. If your mailing address and/or other contact information changes, please notify @email