The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center – Report from the field by Anne Morgan, ’09
Anne Morgan, who works as the Literary Manager for the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, provides backstage view of the Center.
The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference is one of the country’s leaders in new play development. Writers such as August Wilson, John Guare, Lee Blessing,Wendy Wasserstein, David Lindsay Abaire, and more recently Julia Cho, Nilo Cruz, LynnNottage, and more, have spent time on the O’Neill’s bucolic Connecticut campus developing their work and refining their craft.
What exactly happens at the National Playwrights Conference? The National Playwrights Conference (NPC) runs the month of July every year and during that time develops around eight new plays. Each play is given a director, dramaturg, design team, and company of actors. The development process begins with the “dream design meeting,” during which the playwright sits down with the design team (director and dramaturg observe in silence) to explore the sensory world of the play and dream big.
As rehearsals begin, goals are set and scripts distributed. Each play gets four full days of rehearsal followed by two days that each have a rehearsal period and a presentation of the play for the audience. All presentations are script-in-hand readings. Some choose to spend the rehearsal time focusing on the text and, as a result, present very simple chair and music stand readings; other playwrights need to see the play up on its feet so may present something with more staging. The second day of rehearsal and presentation are vital to the process as they allow playwrights to incorporate what they learned from the previous night’s presentation into the work. The staged readings are at the crux of the conference; they allow the playwright to observe when and how an audience engages with their work.
So, how does a writer get to the O’Neill? Selecting works for NPC is a nine- month process. It begins in September when we begin accepting submissions for one month. We typically receive 800 – 1,000 scripts at this time. After scripts have been received, they are
The first round of selection utilizes about 150 readers from around the country. All readers submit their reports by January. By March, the Artistic Council narrows down the semi-finalists to about 25%, or 5% of the total applicants, for the finalist round. Final selections are made by Artistic Director Wendy C. Goldberg. By mid-April, works have been selected for the summer. Each year, the majority, if not all, of the works developed come from the Open Submission process. Invitations or collaborations will sometimes be a part of the mix, as they help launch conversations with a larger national field.
The Literary Office oversees this whole process in addition to managing the selection processes for the National Music Theater Conference, the National Puppetry Conference, and the Cabaret and Performance Conference and providing dramaturgical support to the National Theater Institute and the Young Playwrights Festival.
For young dramaturgs looking to learn more about developing new works, the O’Neill offers both summer and year-long internships. More information is available at theoneill.org.
