Sheila Callaghan

ND Activity

• 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.

• Pen & Swill

  Pen & Swill

  Pen & Swill is a catch-all phrase for events designed to stimulate discussion among the resident playwright company on artistic and professional issues. Some are private-just for resident writers-most are open to the public, and they almost always include drinks and snacks.

• PlayTime

  PlayTime

  Launched in 2002, the PlayTime Developmental Studio provides five New Dramatists writers with a two-week writers' retreat, right in the heart of New York City. PlayTime is a laboratory designed to give playwrights the opportunity to explore, workshop, rethink, and revise ambitious new works of theatre by drawing from a supportive resident company of actors, directors, stage managers, staff, and fellow playwrights.

• Princess Grace Award Fellowship

  Princess Grace Award Fellowship

  The Princess Grace Award in Playwriting was created by the Princess Grace Foundation-USA in 1994 to seek out and support exceptional, emerging American playwrights. The Award provides the winning writer with a year-long residency at New Dramatists, a $7,500 stipend, and a publication opportunity with Samuel French.

• 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.