As one of the only major American theaters with an open submission policy, the script selection process for the O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference and National Music Theater Conference is thorough and intensive. This year’s record-breaking 1,600 submissions to NPC is a number that has nearly doubled since the Conference’s earlier days—a testament to the O’Neill’s longstanding platform for supporting new work, contemporary voices, and widespread perspectives.

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O’Neill Literary Manager Helena Pennington helms the script submission and multi-round reading and evaluation process for NPC and NMTC yearly. Consisting of over 100 theater makers, dramaturgs, directors, arts administrators and more, the NPC reading team reads every play, cover-to-cover. A unique quality of the O’Neill is that “we aren’t a style-driven theater—instead, we’re looking for plays with a singularity of perspective, strength of voice, and innate theatricality”, says Pennington.

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First-round readers look for exactly that, whittling the number of scripts in consideration to about 300 Semifinalists. The second round of adjudicators is comprised of industry-leading professionals whose criteria becomes “more than just ‘is this play compelling?’ or ‘does it have artistic merit?’”, says Pennington. “But also, ‘Do the needs of the play and playwright align with the resources that we have to offer them?’” The final round, reading from a pool of just 150 incredible pieces, is driven by a small team of O’Neill artistic staff, led by Artistic Director Melia Bensussen, who consider 10-15 plays weekly from December through March. Their focus is twofold: both on identifying artistic excellence, and on the specific ways in which the O’Neill could support each piece. The selection process is very similar for NMTC, which also features a multi-tiered reading process culminating in interviews with a handful of Finalists. Decisions are made by Artistic Director Alex Gemignani. 

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“No one’s work is treated dismissively. There is a great amount of care and respect that goes into the consideration of each piece”, says Zeina Salame, an O’Neill dramaturg and Semifinalist script reader for NPC and NMTC since 2022. Salame also notes that considering the “compatibility of the creative process” is a factor in season selection. “It doesn’t mean that [all writers, dramaturgs, and O’Neill staff must] work in the same way, but that the ways we work must work well together.”

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Once the selections are finalized and writers are on board, they are paired with their workshop dramaturg—a foundational pillar of the O’Neill’s new work development process.

 

“When it comes to new plays, a dramaturg is similar to an editor for a novelist”, says Carrie Chapter, who has been involved with the O’Neill as a dramaturg, a literary office staff member, and an NCI alum since 2008. “The dramaturg advocates for the playwright’s greater artistic intention, helping realize the goals of the piece and how to achieve them. They are good listeners and good confidants.”

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A dramaturg’s role—at the O’Neill and in the industry at large—varies, depending on what each playwright needs for their show and process. A dramaturg may pose questions that help pique creative curiosity, navigate script revisions, offer suggestions on possible avenues to explore, or provide additional research on a specific element in the piece. According to Pennington, “When it comes to new work, the dramaturg often functions as both an early audience member and collaborative editor. They can articulate—and ideally, help bridge—the distance between the creator’s intention and the effect their work is giving in the moment, with empathy and awareness”.

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According to a report on the first five years of the O’Neill’s history by founder George C. White, and corroborated by a scholarly article by Joel Schechter, American dramaturgy had a major genesis right here at the O’Neill. The Conferences sprang from a mission to provide space for writers to gather and collaborate freely. As industry intrigue ramped up in the mid-1960’s, critics and producers were coming into Waterford all the more frequently. White and inaugural NPC Artistic Director Lloyd Richards had to find a way to protect the writers and not hinder their creative expression, or be influenced by commercial filtering themselves. Richards was drawn to the idea of “us[ing] an especially skilled critic as a sort of ombudsman between the director and the dramatist,” stated George C. White in his report on the first five years. “I suggested that the name for this person might be stolen from Bertolt Brecht’s theater and we call them ‘Dramaturgs’.”

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This arrangement, in turn, offered writers a concentrated period of development for the work that was not driven by industry influence or critique, but rather by a focused collaboration led by the writer and their goals. This practice was a first step towards the enduring legacy of the O’Neill—and its intensive mission to support theater makers and the development of their work in an incubated environment of creativity, thought, and artistic exploration. Today, dramaturgical support is integrated into our National Puppetry Conference and Young Playwrights Festival, in addition to NPC and NMTC.

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The O’Neill campus, overlooking the Long Island Sound, is a singular place to collaborate creatively. “It’s insulated, not isolated. There’s a unique overlap of Conferences and disciplines, and when you are there, you understand yourself as an artist as a part of something”, says Zeina Salame. “A new work playwright can be very vulnerable. The conditions of the O’Neill support relationship-building, and the container of the place itself allows for trust to get built very quickly.” Through walks along the beach or conversations overlooking the ocean at 2am on an exchange between two characters, the whole O’Neill campus is the artists’ home for creating and honing their work.

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“The O’Neill allows the creative process to be deeply vulnerable, available, and immersive”, says Carrie Chapter. “With play development having a greater risk of ending, the O’Neill is the last of its kind in a way; it’s even more of a sanctuary.”

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“Playwrights, librettists, and composers are scribes. Whether it’s wildly fictional or based in reality, they are offering us the language, the text, that becomes the work in which we understand the society and the current world around us”, says Salame.

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“You get to encounter new work as it’s finding itself”, says Chapter. “And there are some really wonderful plays that may not ever get to a full production. Whether they go on to a full production or not, you can say ‘I saw that at the O’Neill!’, allowing it to get its lifeforce and stage time.”

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Being an audience member at the O’Neill means that you get to see theater in its very first stage of development—and often experience the very first time it’s read aloud. “You get to be in the room where it happened”, says Salame. “O’Neill audiences are savvy and often know how their presence in the room helps shape next steps of play. It really matters that the audience is there. Where the audience laughs, cries, is silent, or shifts in their seat all influences how the play is developed.” What some might deem impossible to stage is not a concern here, and it can be uniquely thrilling for audience members to imagine the potential for a show’s full staging.

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The dramaturg’s role during readings and public presentations is to take in everything that happens during the show, and then lead a constructive conversation with the audience in talkbacks following the performance. Here, the dramaturg gathers information beyond ‘what did you like?’, but rather, ‘what did you understand from this specific moment in the show? Or this one?’ In this regard, a talkback at the O’Neill is very different from a talkback at a fully produced show, where the focus is often on what the audience wants to know from the creative team.

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“When we lose new work, we lose ourselves”, says Pennington. “What we do is vital to the expansion of the English-language theatrical canon. The thing to remember is that very few of our most esteemed alumni were heavy-hitters their first time at the O’Neill—it was only with dramaturgical care and other institutional connections that made them the next big playwright, the next big composer.”

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The enduring legacy of the O’Neill and its commitment to writers would not be possible without our dramaturgs—or without you, the audience. Thank you for supporting new voices, for uplifting new work, and for your continued contribution to crafting the next bold act of the American Theater.