2026 Conference Kick-Off & Fundraiser
2026 Conference Kick-Off & Fundraiser
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Tickets are very limited for this event. Venue details will be provided closer to the date. This event is supported by a generous donation from Linda and David Glickstein.
Calling all past, current, or future PlayPenn supporters! Join us for an intimate evening of food and drink as we kick-off our 2026 New Play Development Conference. Meet our conference playwrights, directors, PlayPenn staff, and celebrate the bold and diverse voices shaping the future of American theater and support PlayPenn's year-round programs and programming!
Why Support PlayPenn?
New plays begin as acts of imagination. Before there is language, form, or certainty, there is time spent wondering what a story might become. PlayPenn exists to protect that space, believing that the future of the American theatre depends on places where artists are trusted with time, ambition, and care.
For more than twenty years, PlayPenn has operated as a research and development center for new work, rooted in Philadelphia and connected nationally.
Our role is not production and not presentation. It is early, sustained investment at the moment when work is most fragile and most alive. We build the conditions that allow writers to experiment, to fail safely, to revise deeply, and to discover what a play truly wants to be before it enters the marketplace.
Much of what audiences encounter later on major regional and national stages begins long before press, premieres, or recognition. It begins in rooms where time is protected, where artists are paid to think, and where the pressure to resolve meaning too quickly is removed. That is the work PlayPenn does, largely out of view.
The future of the American theatre is being imagined now, in spaces most audiences never see. Supporting PlayPenn is a way to stand behind that work and help shape what comes next.
About the 2026 New Play Development Conference
PlayPenn’s nationally recognized New Play Development Conference brings together readings of new plays alongside a citywide series of civic gatherings, workshops, artist exchanges, and public conversations focusing on art, democracy, historical memory, belonging, and collective imagination. This community-focused approach to new play development reflects a broader vision of theatre in a shared civic life that illuminates what theatre can do, who participates in it, how it unfolds, and why it matters.
The 19-event Conference brings together 22 playwrights participating across workshops, conversations, and five new work presentations while expanding its scope to include an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Eboni Booth (Primary Trust), free playwriting workshops for adults, teens, and women over 50, and a public conversation examining constitutional history and civic identity.
Additional programming includes a community workshop for queer theatre makers; a convening on innovation in theatre-making with leaders from Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Cannonball Festival, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Lemonade Stand, and Tiny Dynamite; and an acting lab focused on approaches to new play development and cross-community exchanges among theatre artists.
Location
Center City, Phiadelphia, 19102