$10 million for new playwrights

The Mellon Foundation has donated $10 million in grants ranging from $500,000 to $2 million to producing organizations and playwright support organizations (labs and the like) in support of new voices in American theatre. These gifts were prompted by a three-year study of the difficulties that new plays have in getting to the public, most of which include the production part of the equation and not the creating. The article goes in depth into what the different organizations are planning to do with their money, but my favorite is the Public Theatre in New York: they plan on creating a "master playwright" position with New York University to give a playwright a salary, benefits, light teaching duties, and time to devote to his/her art. The article quote Oskar Eustis, the Public's artistic director as saying: "Every theater with a budget of more than $5 or $6 million should support a playwright. That would create 200 playwriting jobs and change the landscape of how we support playwrights." Amen.

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Leslie Fay