About the Conference

The National Playwrights Conference — the O’Neill’s founding program — is a national laboratory offering resources vital to creative risk-taking. Every year, innovative, unproduced works are selected from a pool of 1,400+ submissions to be developed with the support of a professional company of actors, designers, dramaturgs, and directors. For this development, the Conference proudly implements a staged reading process born of the workshop model developed early in the O’Neill’s history by its founder, George C. White, and NPC’s inaugural artistic director, Lloyd Richards. The remaining time in each writer’s residency is self-directed — to think, create, and interact with other artists. This year’s talented group of writers join a cadre of O’Neill playwright alumni who have reimagined the American theater in fundamental ways, including August Wilson, David Henry Hwang, Wendy Wasserstein, Jeremy O. Harris, Dominique Morisseau, Martnya Majok, and more.