The New Dramatists

During the summer of 1981 when I was living in Madison, New Jersey and working on a five show contract for Paul Barry as an actor at the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, I was introduced by another actress in the company, Victoria Boothby,  to David Juaire, who at that time was the Artistic Programs Director for the New Dramatists in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City.  I knew absolutely nothing about the New Dramatists.  Victoria assured me that it was a wonderful organization that worked with member playwrights to develop their play.

David encouraged me to stop by and see him when I moved back to New York City.  In November of 1981, my contract in New Jersey was finished and David hired me as his assistant for the rest of the season.  My job was to assist in casting and to stage manage the readings and staged readings of the writers’ new works.  In September of 1982 David suddenly died and Tom Dunn, who was then the Executive Director of the New Dramatists, asked me to stay on and run the artistic programs department.

I had little idea what I was doing in that job, but I was working with a lot of very talented unknown playwrights who all came to theater from very different backgrounds.  The roster of writers included Steve Carter, Lynne Alvarez, Constance Congdon, August Wilson, Romulus Linney, Peter Maloney, John Olive, John Patrick Shanley, Mac Wellman, Oyamo, Robert Schenkkan, Wendy Kesselman, James Yoshimura, Jeffrey Sweet and many others. We also worked with non-members from all over the world including Tom Kenneally from Australia who had just written the book SCHINDLER’S LIST.

The New Dramatist’s Board of Directors was like a Who’s Who in the New York Theater. The Board included Richard Adler, Beatrice Straight, Jean Dalrymple, Ruth Goodman Goetz, Milton Goldman, Abbott Van Nostrand, Kertuu Shubert, Isabelle Stevenson, Elizabeth McCann, Robert Anderson and James Nederlander. 

I quietly listened to the writers and directors and slowly learned what the job required. They all taught me so much about this world of new play development. During this artistically very fertile time in my life, I produced the workshops and readings of over 400 new American plays. Some of these scripts went on to win Pulitzer Prizes, Tony Awards,  Obie Awards and multiple other honors. More importantly, during that time we developed a fresh, vibrant crop of new American playwrights who would go on to change America through their writing. 

The exposure the New Dramatists gave me to new plays and new playwrights was invaluable. I was at the New Dramatists for three and a half years and finally left in June, 1985. What I learned from those theater artists and the contacts I made while working there influenced every moment of my career as I moved forward.