PlayPenn's 20th Anniversary New Play Development Conference Expands To More Philadelphia Districts

PlayPenn's storied New Play Development Conference returns in 2025— the first since the 2022 Conference which featured plays exclusively by Philadelphia playwrights. This edition of the New Play Development Conference marks the organization's 20th Anniversary and opens eligibility to playwrights from the larger Mid-Atlantic Region (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and D.C.).

Applications go live on the PlayPenn Website on October 15, 2024, and will remain open through November 8th, 2024, or until 200 applications are received. As a Philadelphia-based organization, PlayPenn commits that at least one of the four Conference plays selected will be by a Philadelphia playwright.

The Conference will take place June 30 - July 20th, 2025. Each of the four chosen Conference plays will be developed in partnership with a theatre company in Philadelphia. Each of the selected plays is given a 29-hour workshop, over a two-week period, culminating in two public readings. The first of the two readings will take place at the theatre partner's venue so that their community can participate.

In the 20 years since its inception, PlayPenn has developed more than 800 plays, including work by playwrights that went on to win the Tony Award (J.T. Rogers), the Pulitzer Prize (James Ijames), the Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards (Samuel D. Hunter), the Terrence McNally Award (Stephanie Kyung Sun Walters), the Barrymore Award (R. Eric Thomas), the Pew Fellowship (Katherine Clark Gray) or been named a Kilroy Honoree (Lindsay Joelle, Santi Castro, and Carl(os) Roa). Partner theatres and venues will be announced, along with the four Conference plays, in March 2025.

PlayPenn is a Philadelphia artist-driven organization dedicated to the development of new plays and playwrights. PlayPenn fully supports the needs of the writer and the demands of the play in an ever-evolving process within which playwrights can engage in risk-taking, boundary-pushing work.