Sylvan Oswald

Resident Playwright

2009 -- 2016

Sylvan Oswald is a transgender theater artist who creates plays, texts, and publications. His plays are often set in Philadelphia, his hometown. Sylvan is the author of Cleopatra and three trilogies. They are Mystery plays: Profanity, Nightlands, and Sun Ra; Romance plays: Pony, Vendetta Chrome, and Painful Adventures; and Philadelphia plays: Plutonics, Two Spent Swimmers, Desmond..., and Goat Songs. Recent collaborations include text for puppet-theater artist Dan Hurlin’s Disfarmer at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2009, and Zoetrope, a music-theater work in progress with composer/director Alec Duffy and designer Mimi Lien. Sylvan is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and the recipient of a Six Points Fellowship, the Dorothy B. Strelsin Playwriting Fellow at Soho Rep, a Jerome Fellowship from The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, a Thurber House Playwriting Fellowship from The Ohio State University, and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Dramatists Guild. Sylvan’s plays have been produced by About Face Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, and New Georges. His work has been workshopped or developed with The Foundry Theatre, Hangar Theatre, McCarter Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, Portland Center Stage, Soho Rep and Page 73 Production’s I73 Writing Group, among others. Sylvan created Play A Journal of Plays with Jordan Harrison and currently teaches playwriting primarily at Barnard College Purchase College/SUNY and will guest teach in 2012 at Mount Holyoke and Princeton.

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.
Full Stage NYC
Full Stage NYC
In 2009, New Dramatists launched Full Stage NYC with major support from the New York Theater Subdistrict Council and Time Warner. Full Stage NYC paired three ND playwrights with three of New York's most adventurous theatre companies to develop a play at ND and have it produced by the theatre: Sylvan Oswald with New Georges, Jordan Harrison with NAATCO, and Daniel Alexander Jones with Soho Rep.
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.