GET WHAT YOU WANT
65 Opportunities · Fellowships · Residencies · Contests · Festivals · Commissions · Emergency Funds · Screen · Jobs
Deadlines run September 1 through November 30, 2026.
Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts — Residency Program
Deadline: September 1, 2026
Website: https://www.khncenterforthearts.org/residencyresident-application/how-apply
$175/week stipend · $35 fee, not waivable · 2 to 8 weeks · Nebraska City, NE
KHN runs two cycles a year and this one places residents in Session 1, January 4 through June 25, 2027. The center hosts a small cohort at a time across visual art, writing, and composition, in a converted warehouse a block off the main street of a town of 7,000. Writers get a private bedroom and bathroom plus a separate studio, usually in a shared apartment with a common kitchen. The $175 weekly stipend is small but it is cash, and there is no residency fee stacked on top of it.
The application is anonymous in the parts that count. You submit two blind statements, one on the work you would do at KHN and one on where your career is going, plus an anonymized work sample and two professional references. Your resume is the only place your name is allowed to appear. The $35 fee cannot be waived, so know that before you start.
For a playwright the framing question is solitude. The KHN cohort is quiet and non-collaborative. Pitch a draft you need to sit alone with, not a piece that needs actors in the room. Notification for this deadline comes by November 1, one of the fastest turnarounds on this list. Next deadline: March 1, 2027.
Wagner College — 2027 Stanley Drama Award
Deadline: September 1, 2026
Website: https://wagner.edu/performing-arts/stanley-drama/
$2,000 first prize · $32 reading fee
One of the oldest continuously running playwriting prizes in the country, established in 1957 and endowed through the Stanley-Timolat Foundation. The winners list earns the reputation: Terrence McNally’s This Side of the Door, Lonne Elder III’s Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, Jonathan Larson’s Rent. Judges over the years have included Edward Albee, Paul Zindel, Geraldine Page, and David Susskind.
First prize is $2,000 for an original full-length play, musical, or thematically related one-act sequence that has not been professionally produced or published by a trade house. One submission per playwright. Plays previously entered may not be resubmitted, and former winners are ineligible. Those two rules disqualify a steady stream of people who forget what they sent in 2023.
The $32 reading fee is payable online. Once paid, email stanleydramaaward@wagner.edu with a PDF of the completed application form, the manuscript, and your payment confirmation. Musicals must include digital links to the score. Winner and finalists are announced in spring 2027.
Shakespeare’s Globe — Climate Playwriting Prize 2026 [UK AND UK-BASED WRITERS ONLY]
Deadline: September 1, 2026, 12:00 noon UK time
Website: https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/jobs-and-opportunities/climate-playwriting-prize-2026/
£15,000 · No fee · Not open to US-based writers
This is the richest playwriting purse anywhere this season and American writers cannot enter it. That is the headline, and it is here because the prize keeps circulating in US roundups as though it were international. It is not. The eligibility line reads “UK and UK-based playwrights,” so residency is the gate, not citizenship. If you hold a US passport and live in Bristol, you can apply. If you live in Brooklyn, you cannot, and no amount of climate urgency in your play changes that.
The winner receives £15,000 in cash, dramaturgical support developing the play to rehearsal draft with specialists at the Globe, Climate Spring, and Fern Culture, and an exclusive eighteen-month Globe option with a stated aspiration to produce. Aspiration is not a guarantee. Read the option terms before you sign anything.
Plays must run 70 minutes or longer, be in English, and have no previous production, though a fringe run of fewer than eight performances does not disqualify. No musicals, no work written specifically for children, no straight adaptations. Early drafts are explicitly welcome and judging weighs the promise of the idea alongside its execution. The application is the play as a PDF, a CV, a synopsis of up to 300 words, and a separate 300-word statement on your approach to the subject. Writers need prior professional script experience, which includes fringe production, commission, or development schemes. Judges include Michelle Terry, Lucy Kirkwood, Lenny Henry, and Amir Nizar Zuabi.
Bloedel Reserve — Creative Residency
Deadline: September 1, 2026
Website: https://bloedelreserve.org/creative-residency/
Three-week residency · Private housing · Bainbridge Island, WA
Three weeks in a two-bedroom house on a 140-acre reserve across the water from Seattle, with 24-hour access to the grounds and use of a Smart Car. Playwriting, screenwriting, theatre, performance art, literature, poetry, and storytelling all appear on the eligible list, which is broader than most nature-oriented programs.
Two requirements shape the whole application. Your project must relate to nature in a specific and articulable way, and you must deliver a public presentation, workshop, lecture, demonstration, or performance during the residency. A generic “I need quiet to finish a draft” application loses here to a project that knows why Bloedel is the right room: place, ecology, landscape, botanical life, climate, extinction, the physical relationship between a body and a landscape.
Applicants must be 21 or older. No pets. The reserve does not publish a stipend figure on the residency page, so ask when you apply rather than assuming.
Corsicana Artist and Writer Residency — 2027 Season
Deadline: September 1, 2026
Website: https://www.corsicanaresidency.org/apply
Two-month funded residency · $30 application fee · $200 administration fee if accepted
Two-month residencies inside 100 West, a preserved 1890s Odd Fellows lodge in downtown Corsicana, Texas, about fifty miles south of Dallas. The 2027 season hosts six artists and three writers across three terms. Residents receive lodging, dedicated studio space, airport transportation from DFW, staff support, and connection to North Texas cultural networks.
Budget for two fees, not one. The application costs $30, and accepted applicants pay a one-time $200 administration fee by November 1, 2026. Travel, meals, and materials are on you. Writers submit two samples of up to 2,000 words each and two references, with no recommendation letters required, which saves you the usual two weeks of chasing people.
For a playwright the draw is not theatre infrastructure. There is none. The draw is subject matter and scale. Corsicana’s history runs through the first major Texas oil strike, decades of decline, and a current small-town revival driven partly by artists moving in. That is fertile material for anyone working with extraction, labor, land, family systems, or the mythology of the American South and West.
Ohio Arts Council — Individual Excellence Awards, FY2027
Deadline: September 1, 2026, 5:00 p.m. ET
Website: https://oac.ohio.gov/grants/10-grant-opportunities/05-individual-excellence-awards
$5,000 unrestricted · No fee · Ohio residents only
This is the cycle Ohio playwrights wait two years for. The OAC alternates disciplines between odd and even years, and FY2027 is an odd year, which puts playwriting and screenplays in the pool alongside choreography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, music composition, and poetry. The award is $5,000, unrestricted, with no match requirement and no project reporting beyond a final narrative.
Residency is strict. You must have lived in Ohio for a full year before the September 1 deadline and remain a resident through the grant period. Applications run through ARTIE, the OAC’s SmartSimple portal, and require a work sample completed within the last three to five years plus narrative and artistic philosophy statements.
The panel is reading for excellence in the writing, not for a project plan. Send your strongest 20 to 30 pages rather than the newest thing on your desk. Awards are announced in January 2027, agreements are due by February 28, and the final report is due December 31 of the grant year.
Stowe Story Labs — Online Feature Campus and TV Writers’ Room
Deadline: September 2, 2026, 11:59 p.m. PT
Website: https://stowestorylabs.org
$35 application fee · $2,650 program fee · Online
Two parallel longform programs running online this fall. The Feature Campus begins October 26 and meets Mondays from noon to 3 p.m. ET. The TV Writers’ Room begins October 18 and meets Sundays in the same window. Each cohort caps at twelve, which makes these working rooms rather than lecture series.
The money runs the wrong direction and you should know that going in. This is tuition, not a fellowship. The $35 application fee is separate from the $2,650 program fee. What you are buying is sustained contact with Stowe’s advisor network across a multi-week arc plus entry into an alumni body that has moved projects toward production and representation. Stowe runs separate fellowship and scholarship tracks that offset cost for some applicants, listed at stowestorylabs.org/fellowships-scholarships. Check those before you pay full freight.
Submission is light: a writing sample from an existing script, or five pages of original writing if this is your first. Admissions are rolling, so applying early beats applying on the 2nd. No residency requirement, no representation disqualifier.
AMT Theater — Cambiando the Script
Deadline: September 6, 2026
Website: https://www.amttheater.org
No fee · Staged reading in Manhattan · Genuinely bilingual scripts only
AMT Theater on West 45th Street is programming a night of bilingual one-acts and the call is specific about what bilingual means. They want Spanish and English braided together, “reflecting the authenticity and complexity of bilingual life.” A play in English with one abuela who says mija twice is not it. That is the detail most submissions will miss.
Length caps at 45 minutes and every genre is open, including musicals and experimental work. Selected plays get a staged reading at AMT on Monday, October 19, 2026, in front of a live audience. From a September 6 deadline that is a fast turnaround, so expect a compressed notification and be sure you can be in New York in mid-October before you send.
Submit by email only. Script to operations@amttheater.org with the subject line “Cambiando the Script Submission.” No reading fee. The site publishes no stipend figure, so treat this as development and exposure in a Midtown house and ask about compensation if you are selected.
Seattle Public Theater — The Distillery New Works Festival 2027
Deadline: September 7, 2026, or when 600 submissions arrive
Website: https://www.seattlepublictheater.org/distillery
No fee listed · Travel stipend for out-of-area writers · Attendance required
Submit this week. The Distillery page prints “September 7th” without a year, and since the festival it feeds runs June 10 through 13, 2027, the operative date is September 7, 2026. The bigger constraint is the 600-script cap, which will likely close the door before the calendar does.
Full-length plays only, one per writer. The theatre wants work still in motion from writers with what it calls a development mindset, meaning scripts that will change during the festival rather than finished pieces looking for a showcase. About six plays are selected from the open pool, joined by one resident playwright’s script.
Every submission must pass the Macha Test, a feminist screening standard borrowed from Macha Theatre Works. The Distillery page does not spell out the criteria and points you to machatheatreworks.com instead. Read that page before you submit, because failing the test is a threshold disqualification unrelated to the quality of your writing. Selected playwrights are required to attend in Seattle in June 2027, with a travel stipend provided for out-of-area writers. Submissions go through a Google Form linked from the Distillery page. Questions to literary@seattlepublictheater.org.
Princeton University — Princeton Arts Fellowship
Deadline: September 8, 2026, 11:59 p.m. EDT
Website: https://arts.princeton.edu/fellowships/princeton-arts-fellowship/
$93,000 per year for two years · No fee · Any nationality
The largest single payday available to a playwright in this issue, and it closes in a week. The fellowship pays $93,000 annually for a two-year appointment running September 1 through July 1 each academic year, funded in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the David E. Kelley ’79 Society of Fellows Fund. Fellows teach one course per semester, though an artistic assignment such as directing or choreographing a campus production can substitute for classroom teaching.
This cycle is not open to all disciplines. Princeton is accepting applications in Dance, Theater and Music Theater, and Music only. Playwrights and musical theatre writers are in scope. Screenwriters and prose writers are not, this round.
Eligibility is broader than most academic fellowships and the disqualifiers are easy to trip over. Any country, no citizenship requirement, no age limit. But you cannot hold a Princeton PhD, you are out if you previously held the Hodder Fellowship or have a sustained continuous affiliation with the university, and you cannot hold a concurrent teaching position anywhere else during the term. The standard is early-career artists whose achievements demonstrate extraordinary promise, which in practice means a real production history but not a career’s worth.
Apply through Interfolio at apply.interfolio.com/187043. You need a CV, one reference contact rather than advance letters, work samples, and a 750-word proposal covering how you will develop your work at Princeton, what you might teach or build with undergraduates, and how you will contribute to the community. That last element is scored. Princeton expects “frequent and engaged interactions with students,” so a proposal that treats teaching as a tax on your writing time will not compete.
Princeton University — The Hodder Fellowship, 2027-28
Deadline: September 8, 2026, 11:59 p.m. EDT
Website: https://arts.princeton.edu/fellowships/hodder-fellowship/
$93,000 stipend · 10 months · No teaching · No fee
The closest thing in American arts funding to being handed a year. A $93,000 stipend for a ten-month appointment as a Visiting Fellow, no formal teaching, and what the fellowship’s founding language calls “studious leisure” to undertake significant new work. Fellows are chosen more for promise than for performance, and are meant to be artists with much more than ordinary intellectual and literary gifts. Given the strength of the pool, most successful fellows have published a first book or achieved something comparable in their own field.
This cycle is restricted to Dance, Theater and Music Theater, Visual Arts, and Music. Playwrights apply under Theater and Music Theater. You need not be a US citizen. Previous Princeton Arts Fellows are ineligible, and there is a lifetime cap of two applications, so do not burn one on a year when your materials are not ready.
Both Princeton fellowships close the same night and the applications are close enough in shape that preparing one gets you most of the way through the other. Do both.
Eugene O’Neill Theater Center — 2027 National Playwrights Conference
Deadline: September 10, 2026, 11:59 p.m.
Website: https://www.theoneill.org/npc
$15 fee, waivers available · Room, board, and stipend · US work authorization required
The window opened August 25 and closes September 10. That is sixteen days, and it was not public when last month’s issue went out, so treat this as the most time-sensitive item in the newsletter.
Selected playwrights get a multi-week residency on the O’Neill’s ninety-acre seaside campus in Waterford, Connecticut, with room and board covered in dormitory housing and a stipend the O’Neill does not publish a figure for. Your play gets a director, a dramaturg, and a professional Equity cast, plus two public script-in-hand readings in front of an industry audience that shows up specifically to find work. The alumni list is the argument.
The eligibility rules disqualify people on technicalities every year. You must be 18 or older with US work authorization. You must be the sole author and the exclusive rights holder, with documented clearance for any adaptation. Cast size caps at eight actors. The play must run at least 60 minutes and function as a main evening event. It must be unproduced and must not be optioned for professional production before July 31, 2027, which means a script already booked for spring 2027 is out even though it has not opened. All prior developmental activity must be disclosed, including readings and workshops, so do not quietly omit that reading you did last year. Work generated by AI is barred outright.
Submit through Submittable at theoneill.submittable.com/submit: a fully anonymized PDF, a character breakdown with age and gender, a biographical statement, roughly a page of developmental goals, and a residency goals statement capped at 250 words. Those two goals documents carry more weight than most writers assume. Readers use them to judge whether a workshop will actually move your script, so name the specific problem you cannot solve alone. The $15 fee is paid by card in the application, and waivers are granted first-come, first-served through the O’Neill’s request form. Request one now, not on the 9th. Notifications roll out between early March and late May 2027.
MacDowell — Fellowship, Spring/Summer 2027
Deadline: September 10, 2026, 11:59 p.m. EST
Website: https://www.macdowell.org/apply/apply-for-fellowship
No residency fees · Need-based stipends and travel grants · $30 fee, waivers available
Theatre is one of MacDowell’s disciplines, which means your script is read by a theatre panel rather than shoehorned into literature. Film and video is a separate discipline, so a playwright who also writes for screen can apply in either lane without contorting the project description. This cycle covers residencies between March 1 and August 31, 2027, in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
There are no residency fees. You get a private studio, private accommodation, and three meals a day, including the lunch basket left at your studio door so nobody interrupts your working hours. Past that, MacDowell reimburses travel and awards need-based stipends that can cover rent back home, utilities, childcare, and replacement of lost income. Amounts are not published because they are set individually after acceptance. Ask for what you actually need.
MacDowell states that “the sole criterion for acceptance is artistic excellence,” and international artists are eligible. The structural disqualifier is enrollment: you cannot be in a degree-seeking program during the residency season, with a narrow exception for doctoral candidates past coursework. Recent cycles have drawn roughly 1,700 applicants against an acceptance rate near nine percent, so treat the work sample and project description as the whole application, because they are. Check the discipline-specific work sample requirements before you upload, since theatre and literature have different limits. Stays run up to eight weeks with a recommended minimum of two. Decisions arrive about two and a half months out. The $30 fee is waivable for hardship through admissions@macdowell.org.
Harvard Radcliffe Institute — Fellowship Program 2027-28, Creative Arts
Deadline: September 10, 2026, 5:00 p.m. ET
Website: https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/radcliffe-fellowship/application-information
$78,000 stipend plus $5,000 project funds · No fee · 9 months in Cambridge, MA
Playwrights are a stated category here, and the qualifying standard is spelled out: a significant body of independent work in the form, defined for dramatists as plays produced or under option. The fellowship pays $78,000 plus $5,000 for project expenses, with relocation, housing, and childcare assistance available on top based on need.
Fellows get an office or studio in Byerly Hall in Radcliffe Yard, a full Harvard visiting fellow appointment, access to the entire Harvard library system, and use of the athletic facilities. This is residential. You are expected in Cambridge for the academic year, and the actual value of the thing is the cross-disciplinary cohort of scientists, historians, and journalists you eat lunch with for nine months.
The application is a CV, a 1,400-word project proposal with a bibliography where appropriate, a work sample of one play or a section running no more than 30 pages, and three reference letters. Give your recommenders lead time, because letters are what sinks otherwise strong applications. Write the 1,400 words so a non-theatre reader can follow them. Your panel will include people who have never sat in a rehearsal room. Everyone is notified by the end of March 2027.
KI Theater — Italian American Playwrights Series 2026-27
Deadline: September 12, 2026
Website: https://kitheater.org/call-italian-american-playwrights-26-27/
No fee · Reading series · Italian American playwrights only
KI Theater in New York is building a season-long reading series of work by Italian American playwrights. The identity requirement is a hard gate: the playwright must self-identify as Italian American, and part of your application is a written statement establishing that connection. Preference goes to plays engaging Italian American identity, history, family, or culture, though not every script has to be about the subject.
Length is what kills submissions here. Scripts must run 40 to 75 minutes. Mid-length and full-length only, and ten-minute plays are explicitly refused. The play must be unproduced and never staged, though readings and workshops do not disqualify you.
Four pieces, each with a word cap: the full script as an anonymized PDF with your name and address stripped from the document, a synopsis of 250 words maximum, a bio of 150 words maximum that includes your connection to Italian American heritage, and a separate statement of 200 words maximum on how the play engages Italian American themes. Submit through the Google Form at https://forms.gle/Gqr5F4Mb7jWxzRZh8. Selections are announced November 10, 2026. Questions to info@kitheater.org or (212) 254-4025.
Writers Guild Foundation — Writers’ Access Support Staff Training Program
Deadline: September 13, 2026, 11:59 p.m. PT
Website: https://www.wgfoundation.org/programs/writers-access-support-staff-training-program
No fee, no tuition · Los Angeles-facing · No prior assistant experience permitted
The most direct route into a television writers’ room on the fall calendar, and it costs nothing. The Writers Guild Foundation trains a cohort in the actual mechanics of the writers’ assistant and script coordinator jobs: room transcription, script formatting and revision tracking, production paperwork, and the etiquette that determines whether you get asked back. Instruction comes from people currently doing those jobs. The program runs roughly twelve to fourteen weeks in the first half of 2027.
The eligibility is narrow in a way that works in your favor. You must be at least 18, authorized to work in the United States, and actively seeking support staff employment. The disqualifier is experience: if you have already worked as a writers’ assistant or script coordinator, you cannot apply. The Foundation prioritizes writers historically shut out of these rooms, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and disabled applicants, and applicants over 50.
Apply through the Foundation’s Submittable portal. They ask you to submit at least 48 hours ahead of close because the portal jams in the final hours. Applications generated or edited with AI tools are disqualified. Notification by December 15, 2026.
Caltech TACIT — MACH 33: Festival of New Science-Driven Plays
Deadline: September 14, 2026
Website: https://tacit.caltech.edu/mach33/
Greater Los Angeles focus · Science-driven full-lengths
The only festival in the country built specifically around plays driven by science, and the scientific rigor is part of the evaluation. MACH 33 wants new, unpublished, unproduced full-length plays in which science is structural rather than decorative. Being at Caltech means your physics gets read by people who know the physics, which is either the best or the worst news depending on how you have handled it.
Geography matters. The program targets playwrights from the Greater Los Angeles area and frames this as a focus rather than an absolute bar, but selected writers are expected in the room during development. Applying from Chicago means applying against the grain of the program’s purpose.
There is a companion track called Launchpad for scripts at an earlier stage, which is the better door if your science play is half-built. MACH 33 inquiries go to arden.e.thomas@gmail.com; Launchpad goes to coleremmen@caltech.edu. No fee or stipend figure is published, so ask when you write.
46 Minutes Collective — Mixed Bag, Fall 2026
Deadline: September 14, 2026, 11:59 p.m. EST
Website: https://www.46mincollective.com
First drafts welcome · Up to 15 minutes · New York
Mixed Bag is a variety show for first drafts, and that framing is the whole point. Most short play festivals want polished, castable, tight ten-minute pieces. This one wants the thing you wrote on Tuesday that you are not sure works. Material runs up to 15 minutes, and the collective is explicit that it is looking for work in development rather than finished product.
That makes it a genuinely useful low-stakes venue for testing a scene from a full-length, a chunk of a musical, or a structural experiment nobody else will read. Applications go through a Google Form at https://forms.gle/ZJgK5fJuAPmSVyrH8.
The site publishes no submission fee, stipend, cast size limit, or eligibility restriction, which at this scale is normal. Email 46mincollective@gmail.com and ask specifically about compensation and how many performances to expect before you commit.
Film Independent — Screenwriting Lab 2027
Deadline: September 14, 2026, members only
Website: https://www.filmindependent.org/programs/applications/
Film Independent membership required, $105 annually · Los Angeles
The non-member window closed August 31. The member window is still open, which means the price of entry this month is a $105 Film Independent membership. Buy the membership, then apply. That is the whole workaround and it is legitimate, since Film Independent publishes the extended member deadline as part of the program design.
The Lab is a full-time two-week intensive in spring 2027. Fellows work a feature screenplay in progress with creative advisors drawn from working screenwriters and executives, in one-on-one sessions rather than group workshop. Film Independent’s artist development programs feed a larger ecosystem including Fast Track, the Project Involve alumni network, and the financiers and producers who move through the organization year-round.
Fiction feature screenplays only, at work-in-progress stage. Acceptance requires ongoing membership. Submit through Film Independent’s Submittable portal. The organization’s other 2027 programs, including the Documentary Producing Lab, Fiction Producing Lab, Episodic Lab, Fast Track, and Project Involve, are all currently closed with windows posted for later cycles. Fiscal sponsorship stays open on a rolling basis at $45, with waivers available.
Sundog Theatre — Scenes from the Staten Island Ferry 2026
Deadline: September 15, 2026, postmark
Website: https://sundogtheatre.org/opportunities/playwright-submissions-scenes-from-the-staten-island-ferry-2026/
No fee · $200 plus five performances · Play must be set on the ferry
Two decades running and one of the cleanest short play deals in the country: nothing to enter, $200 to the playwright, five performances in November 2026. The constraint is absolute. The play must be set on the Staten Island Ferry. Not near it. Not about it. On it.
This year’s theme is Anniversary. Length is 10 to 25 minutes. Priority goes to two-character plays, with three considered. Contemporary setting. Sundog will not read musicals, monologues, poetry, rants, or verse, and asks writers to avoid gratuitous sexual content or violence, which is a real programming preference tied to the audience rather than boilerplate. Work must be original, unpublished, and never produced, and you sign an affirmation of originality.
Submission is by physical mail, blind, and the packaging rules reject people every year. Mail two hard copies, bound or stapled, to Sundog Theatre, “Scenes 2026,” PO Box 10183, Staten Island, NY 10301. Use a removable cover page carrying the title, your name, and contact information so readers see nothing identifying. Number every page. Include a two- to three-sentence synopsis, a 70-word bio, and your full résumé. Postmark by September 15. Contact info@sundogtheatre.org.
The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize — 2027 Cycle
Deadline: September 15, 2026 for North America; September 18 for the UK and elsewhere
Website: https://www.blackburnprize.org/submission/
$25,000 winner · $5,000 per finalist · $10,000 commendation · Nomination only
The most prestigious prize in the English-speaking world for plays by women+ writers, and you cannot enter it yourself. The Prize states it plainly: “We do not accept plays directly from playwrights.” Submissions come only from designated professional theatres called Source Theatres, organized by region across the USA, UK, Ireland, Canada, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and India. Your path in is a literary manager or artistic director who knows your play and puts it forward.
The money is real and it goes deep. Seventy thousand dollars is distributed annually across ten playwrights: $25,000 to the winner, $5,000 to each of the nine finalists, and a discretionary $10,000 Special Commendation. Being a Blackburn finalist has moved more careers than most productions do.
Eligibility covers women, trans, and non-binary writers. Full-length plays only. Musicals are ineligible. Previous winners cannot resubmit. Unproduced work is welcome, and a play that has premiered remains eligible so long as the production happened within the preceding calendar year, which is narrower than most writers assume. The useful action this week is not a form. It is calling the literary office of a theatre that has produced or developed your work and asking whether they are a Source Theatre and whether they will nominate you before the 15th.
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation — 2027 Fellowship
Deadline: September 15, 2026, 11:59 p.m. EST. Work samples September 29. Reference letters October 13.
Website: https://www.gf.org/program/how-to-apply
No fee · US and Canada · Mid-career
Three dates, not one, and people miss the second and third. The application closes September 15. Work samples are due September 29. Three to four reference letters are due October 13. Line up your recommenders this week.
Drama and Performance Art is a longstanding Guggenheim category. Roughly 200 fellowships are awarded annually from a pool that puts the success rate near five percent, and the foundation has awarded more than 18,000 fellowships since 1925. This is mid-career in the truest sense. It supports people who have already made significant contributions and want time and resources to go further. Applicants propose a specific project and demonstrate they are prepared to complete it at the highest level.
Applicants must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States or Canada. Students are ineligible, as are previous Guggenheim Fellows. Institutional affiliation is not required, and independent writers apply on equal footing with academics. You may apply individually or as a pair working on the same project. Guggenheim charges nothing at any stage, and the foundation states directly that no consultant has special influence over selection, which is worth remembering when someone offers to sell you an edge. Notification comes in late April 2027.
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts — Summer 2027 and Moulin à Nef, France
Deadline: September 15, 2026
Website: https://www.vcca.com/apply/
$30 fee, waivable · Fully funded fellowships available at every deadline · Amherst, VA and Auvillar, France
VCCA reviews playwriting and screenwriting on its own panel, which puts scripts in front of readers who read scripts. That alone separates it from general writing residencies where a play competes against short story collections. This deadline covers summer 2027 residencies at Mt. San Angelo in Virginia and is also the single annual deadline for the international program at Moulin à Nef in Auvillar, France.
Residencies include a private studio, housing, and meals. Fully funded fellowships are offered at each deadline and additional financial assistance is available year-round, so do not rule yourself out on cost before you have asked. The $30 application fee is waivable. Start your application, then contact Artist Services at least five days before the deadline to request the waiver.
Applications run through SlideRoom. The summer cycle notifies by December 31, 2026, and the France program by December 15, 2026. VCCA’s other deadlines are January 15 for fall residencies and May 15 for spring.
Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program — 2027-28 Competition
Deadline: September 15, 2026, 5:00 p.m. EDT
Website: https://fulbrightscholars.org/us-scholar-awards
No fee · A few months to a full year abroad · Artists with 7+ years of professional experience
Playwrights, directors, and theatre practitioners are eligible as artists, not as academics. Fulbright’s Scholar competition accepts applicants with more than seven years of professional experience in an artistic field, and awards support creative projects abroad, teaching, or a blend of both. Grant lengths run from a few months to a full academic year, and some awards carry a Flex option that lets you split the grant into multiple shorter visits rather than relocating once.
The application is substantial: a project statement of three to five pages, a CV of up to six pages, two letters of recommendation, short essays on why that country and how you have prepared for it, a portfolio for creative arts applicants, and either syllabi or a reference list depending on your track. A host institution invitation letter is optional and it helps.
Start from the award catalog, not from your project. Fulbright funds specific country-by-country awards, and a strong proposal aimed at a country with no matching award goes nowhere. Peer review runs October through November 2026, notifications begin in December, and final decisions land between January and June 2027.
Jentel Artist Residency — Winter/Spring 2027
Deadline: September 15, 2026, 12:00 noon MST
Website: https://www.jentelarts.org/apply
$400/month stipend · $30 fee · One month · Banner, WY
Confirm before you pay. Jentel lists writers in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Playwriting is not a named category. Email the program and ask whether a script will be read before you spend the $30.
Residents get a private room, a shared kitchen and living area, and a separate studio on a working cattle ranch at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains, plus a stipend paid weekly to cover food and living costs. The session runs January 15 through May 7, 2027, with individual residencies of roughly a month inside that window. Residents bring their own materials. Pets and family cannot be accommodated.
The application is a resume and a discipline-specific work sample through Submittable. Nothing about the setting is hostile to dramatic writing, and playwrights who also work in prose have a clean path in by applying under creative nonfiction or fiction with a sample that fits. The site does not publish a notification date, so ask for that in the same email.
Rumble Theatre — Tremors Festival 2027
Deadline: September 15, 2026, 11:59 p.m. PST
Website: https://rumble.org/shows/call-for-submissions-tremors-festival-2027/
Presentation fee $3,000 to $6,000 CAD · Works in progress · Vancouver, BC · Open internationally
Better money than most works-in-progress festivals and better than this listing looked last month. Rumble pays a presentation fee of $3,000 to $6,000 CAD depending on the scale of your project. Tremors wants projects, excerpts, and works-in-progress of roughly 25 to 35 minutes, presented on a shared festival bill structured like an art party crossed with a night market.
The operative phrase in the call is “performance mode.” The work does not have to be finished, but it has to be able to meet an audience. Solo work, devised projects, excerpts from larger plays, and performance pieces with a live pulse all make sense here. A script mailed in cold does not.
Rumble does not produce. You remain the producer of your own piece. What the festival supplies is the presentation fee, technical services, marketing, archival recording, optional residency space June 7 through 20, 2027, and optional grant-writing mentorship. There is no travel funding beyond the presentation fee, which matters if you are coming from outside British Columbia. Open to artists anywhere.
SeriesFest and Shondaland — Women Directing Mentorship
Deadline: September 15, 2026 regular, $50. November 3, 2026 final, $75.
Website: https://seriesfest.com/women-directing-mentorship/
Shadowing placement on a Shondaland production · US or UK · 3 years professional experience
The grand prize is a directing shadow on an episode of a Shondaland production, which is the kind of access no amount of self-financed short film work substitutes for. Winners and semi-finalists also receive all-access badges to SeriesFest: Season 13 in 2027, where the festival’s industry programming happens.
Eligibility is specific and more open than the title suggests. Applicants need three years of professional experience in any professional role, not only directing, which opens the door to writers, producers, and crew transitioning into episodic directing. You must be at least 21 and based in the United States or the United Kingdom. Anyone who has already directed a network series is out.
Two fee tiers. Fifty dollars by September 15, seventy-five by November 3. Semi-finalists are contacted by email in March 2027, with results confirmed by April. SeriesFest and Shondaland also commit to press and promotional amplification for finalists, which matters more than it sounds when you are building a directing reel with no series credit on it.
Cape Cod Theatre Project — 2027 Season
Deadline: September 15, 2026.
Website: https://capecodtheatreproject.org/apply/
No fee · 24 hours of development · Three public readings · Falmouth, MA
A two-week window and no fee, which means this is one of the few serious development opportunities you can act on the day this newsletter lands. Cape Cod Theatre Project has spent three decades putting new plays in front of summer audiences in Falmouth, and its alumni list is the reason literary offices read the season announcement. Plays that came through CCTP have gone on to Off-Broadway and beyond with regularity that a festival this small should not be able to claim.
Selected playwrights receive 24 hours of developmental rehearsal followed by three public staged readings with audience talkbacks across one week in July. The talkback is not a courtesy here. CCTP audiences are famously willing to say what they think, and the point of the week is to hear a play three times in front of three different rooms and watch what moves. Housing is arranged through donor generosity rather than a published policy, so ask directly about housing, travel, and any stipend when you are contacted.
The rules are short. One play per playwright per season. The script must still be in development, and it cannot have received a professional production or reviewed production before June 30, 2026. Cast size caps at six actors, or eight for musicals, and that count includes the director and the playwright. Submit a PDF named “firstname lastname playtitle.pdf” through the Google Form linked on the apply page, along with a short bio and a brief artistic statement describing how you intend to use the development time. That statement is the piece to labor over. CCTP does not provide feedback on submissions and no longer accepts mailed scripts. Selected playwrights are notified before May 15, 2027.
Ojai Playwrights Conference — 2027 Conference
Deadline: September 18, 2026, 11:59 p.m. PT. Portal opens September 11 at 9:00 a.m. PT.
Website: https://www.ojaiplays.org/play-submissions
Two-week conference · US residency and work authorization required · No agent submissions
One of the small handful of American new play conferences whose alumni list functions as a career credential. The 2027 conference runs July 18 through August 1, 2027 in Ojai, California. Five playwrights are chosen as Workshop Writers and get week one of the conference plus a second week workshopping with professional actors, ending in a public reading. One to three additional writers are named Writers in Residence and receive protected writing time with dramaturgical support.
The timing is unusual and it catches people. The portal does not open until September 11 and closes September 18. That is a seven-day window. Build your materials before the portal opens. Also note that OPC’s other pages, including the submission process page, are stale and still show a 2023 window. Work only from the play submissions page.
Eligibility is limited to playwrights over 18 who reside and have the legal right to work in the United States. Full-length plays only, 60 minutes or longer, no previous professional production, no musicals this cycle, one play per playwright. Plays submitted in previous years are not accepted without explicit permission. OPC will only consider plays submitted directly by the playwright, not nominations from agents or theatres.
The application asks for a 10-page PDF sample and the full script as a separate PDF, both following OPC’s required file-naming convention, plus a 250-word synopsis, a 250-word statement on where the play sits in development and what success would look like, and your cast size. That development statement is what readers actually weigh. A finished play has nothing to gain from a workshop, and OPC selects accordingly. All submissions are read by a paid group of roughly 25 readers. Artists stay in Ojai families’ homes and meals are provided.
Qutub Minar Review — One-Minute Plays
Deadline: September 20, 2026
Website: https://qutubminarreview.wordpress.com/about/
No fee · No payment · International
An international literary journal publishing poetry, very short fiction, interviews, reviews, memoir, travelogue, and one-minute plays. Up to three one-minute plays per submission, by email only to editorqutubminarreview@gmail.com with a cover letter and a bio of roughly seventy words. Copyright reverts to the author after publication. Responses often come within a few days.
There is no payment. For a playwright building an international publication list, or anyone who writes miniatures and has nowhere to put them, it is a clean free credit. One caution: the journal’s own page is internally inconsistent about dates. September 20 is the stated cutoff for the October issue, but another line on the site says October 20. Email the editor to confirm if you are cutting it close.
The New York Public Library — Cullman Center Fellowship, 2027-28
Deadline: September 25, 2026, 5:00 p.m. EDT
Website: https://www.nypl.org/about/fellowships-institutes/cullman-center-scholars-writers/fellowships
$90,000 stipend · Nine months · Five days a week on site
The best-funded research year available to a writer in New York. Ninety thousand dollars for a term running September 7, 2027 through May 26, 2028, supporting projects that draw substantially on the research collections of the Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue. The Center appoints 15 Fellows a year and seeks top-quality writing from creative writers and independent scholars alongside academics. Playwrights are eligible. Visual artists whose projects require extensive collection use are encouraged.
The commitment is real and it should decide whether you apply. Fellows work at the Cullman Center five days a week, Monday through Friday, for the full term, primarily at the Schwarzman Building rather than other Library divisions. You cannot hold this from out of town or stack it with a teaching load. Fellows receive an office with a computer and full access to the Library’s physical and electronic resources.
The strongest playwright applications have a research spine. A play that requires the Berg Collection, the Billy Rose Theatre Division, or the Schomburg Center is a Cullman project. A play you could write in a cabin is not. The application asks for a research proposal, a CV, letters of recommendation, and a creative writing sample. The Center will not accept dossier letters in place of fresh ones written for this application, so give your recommenders a month. Applications from those working in languages other than English are welcome, but the applicant must be conversant in English and all materials must be in English. Fellowships are not granted to post-doctoral fellows for academic projects or to graduate students doing dissertation research. Apply through the NYPL Online Application Portal at https://nypl.onlineapplicationportal.com. Notification in March 2027.
American Academy in Berlin — Berlin Prize, 2027-28
Deadline: September 25, 2026, 12:00 p.m. ET
Website: https://www.americanacademy.de/apply/apply-for-a-fellowship/
$5,000/month · Airfare, housing, partial board · No fee · US citizens and permanent residents
Confirm eligibility first. The open competition names fiction and nonfiction writers. Playwrights are not an explicit category, and visual artists and composers are nomination-only. Write to the Academy before you invest three weeks in the application.
The terms are excellent: $5,000 a month, round-trip airfare, a private furnished apartment with a kitchenette at or near the Hans Arnhold Center on the Wannsee, partial board, and library access for a full semester. Fall runs mid-August to mid-December; spring runs late January to late May.
The bar for writers is a published book with a reputable press. Applicants must be US citizens or permanent residents. Materials are a project proposal of 1,500 to 1,750 words plus a one-page bibliography, a CV capped at ten pages, two writing samples totaling no more than 60 pages, and three letters of recommendation due October 2, one week after the application itself. A playwright with a published book, a hybrid essayist-dramatist, or a writer whose project is research-driven has the strongest case. Notification in late March 2027.
Vermont Studio Center — July through December 2027, including the Dramatic Writer Fellowship
Deadline: September 30, 2026, 11:59 p.m. EST
Website: https://vermontstudiocenter.org/apply
Full fellowships to 35% of residents, partial to everyone else · Johnson, VT
VSC funds a slot specifically for playwrights. The VSC Dramatic Writer Fellowship, supported by the John M. Bissell Foundation, covers a three-week residency for a playwright, and it sits alongside named fellowships including Voices Rising at $2,000, the Hedda Sterne Fellowship at $1,000, and the Latin American and Caribbean Artist Fellowship at $1,000. You apply for the general residency and indicate fellowship interest inside the same application.
Nobody accepted pays full freight. VSC awards full fellowships to 35 percent of residents and partial fellowships to every remaining accepted applicant, with a stated goal of reaching 60 percent full fellowships within three years. Standard residency costs run from roughly $2,700 for two weeks to $4,950 for four, with a discount for residents willing to share a bathroom. Check the current fees page before you quote a number; VSC has been revising it.
Applications are juried in one pool by a rotating panel of practicing artists and writers, and jurors change at every deadline, which is why reapplying after a rejection is standard rather than a black mark. Playwriting and screenwriting are named eligible genres alongside fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, hybrid forms, and translation. Work samples must follow SlideRoom formatting for your genre and jurors stop reading at the page limit, so do not run long. Frame the application through the writing itself: language, structure, research, voice, and what concentrated time will accomplish on the page. Notification by January 1, 2027. Next cycle February 15 through March 31.
Actors Theatre Playhouse — Ten-Minute Play Festival 2027
Deadline: September 30, 2026, or earlier if submissions fill
Website: http://www.atplayhouse.org
No fee · Full production, no cash prize · Open to all writers
A straightforward no-fee ten-minute festival serving West Chesterfield, New Hampshire and Brattleboro, Vermont. Roughly twelve finalists are chosen and notified, auditions and casting happen in March 2027, and eight winning plays are produced in the June 2027 festival. Authors who can travel get multiple complimentary tickets.
Be clear-eyed about the compensation. The theatre states directly that it “cannot offer any financial prizes at this time.” What you get is a full production of a ten-minute play in front of a real audience at no cost to you. For a piece you want to see on its feet before you build it out, that is a fair trade. For a piece you need to monetize, it is not.
The specs are tight. One scene only. Ten to twelve pages maximum. Two to six characters. Minimal scenic requirements, since the festival runs eight plays in an evening. One submission per playwright, and the call may close before September 30 if enough scripts arrive. Email the script to tenplays19@gmail.com with a title page carrying your contact information. You will receive confirmation the committee has it, so follow up if none arrives.
Eugene O’Neill Theater Center — 2027 National Music Theater Conference
Deadline: September 30, 2026, 11:59 p.m. PT. Window opens September 16.
Website: https://www.theoneill.org/nmtc
$15 fee, waivers available · Room, board, and stipend · US work authorization required
The musical counterpart to the NPC and the most serious development opportunity in the country for a new musical that is not yet on a commercial track. Accepted writing teams get a two-week intensive workshop residency in Waterford with full room and board and a stipend, three public script-in-hand readings, and access to the O’Neill’s roster of directors, dramaturgs, music directors, and actors. Each project is assigned what the O’Neill calls a Dream Responder, a senior artist who gives structured feedback.
Eligibility mirrors the NPC with musical-specific adjustments. Eighteen or older with US work authorization. Adaptations require documented rights clearance. Cast size caps at ten. No professional production, and no option for professional production before July 31, 2027. Prior workshops and readings must be disclosed. No AI-generated work.
The application package is specific: the first 30 pages of the book or libretto as a PDF, up to five demo tracks in show order, a synopsis between 150 and 500 words, a character breakdown, and a statement of developmental goals. They want the first 30 pages, not your best 30. If your show takes forty pages to get going, that is information you should act on before you submit rather than after you are rejected.
Kumu Kahua Theatre — Go Try Play Write
Deadline: Last day of every month, including September 30 and October 31
Website: https://www.kumukahua.org/gotryplaywrite
No fee · $100 plus a Bamboo Ridge Press subscription · Open to all
The most reliable recurring small prize in the field. Kumu Kahua in Honolulu, partnered with Bamboo Ridge Press, posts a writing prompt at the start of every month and pays $100 plus a Bamboo Ridge subscription to the winner. No fee, no residency requirement, no published eligibility restrictions. You write to the prompt and submit through a Google Form linked on the page.
The August prompt was a ten-page maximum scene about neighbors coming together after a hurricane. Scenes generally run up to ten pages and monologues up to eight, though the cap varies with the prompt, so read the current month’s instruction rather than assuming. Standard Dramatists Guild format required.
Treat this as a discipline device rather than a career move. It is a monthly deadline that costs nothing, produces a finished ten pages, and occasionally pays. Writers who use it consistently end up with a folder of scenes that become the raw material for longer work.
Shore Scripts — Short Film Fund, Fall Season
Deadline: September 30, 2026 regular; October 30, 2026 final
Website: https://www.shorescripts.com/shortfilmfund/
$15,000 production grant · $4,000 finishing funds · International
Two cash awards anchor this fund. The Production Grant winner receives $15,000 to make the film. A separate Finishing Funds winner receives $4,000 to complete a film already shot. Shore Scripts has produced 28 films through the fund, and those films have played Sundance, Tribeca, Cannes, BFI London, Austin, and Palm Springs.
The fund is unusually useful for playwrights and feature writers because it explicitly accepts proof-of-concept shorts for TV series and features. If you have a pilot or a feature nobody will finance on the page, this is a mechanism for building the eight-minute version that gets people to read the long version. Live-action and animation both qualify, and applicants worldwide are eligible.
Winners get more than money: mentorship from two-time Oscar-nominated producer Maria Gracia Turgeon, festival strategy guidance from Tribeca programmer Kimberley Browning, and free ARRI camera equipment rental. Semi-finalists, finalists, and winners are announced November 23 through December 16, 2026. Entry fee amounts are not posted on the fund landing page, so confirm at checkout before you commit.
Millay Arts — Core Residency, April through July 2027
Deadline: October 1, 2026, midnight EST. Late deadline October 8.
Website: https://www.millayarts.org/residencies/core-residency/
Fully subsidized · $45 fee, $60 late · $100 deposit if accepted
Playwriting is its own category at Millay with a 20-page script sample. So is screenwriting. That is a front door, and it is rarer than it should be. This deadline places residents April through July 2027 at Steepletop, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s former estate in Columbia County, two and a half hours north of New York City, in a cohort of six or seven multidisciplinary artists.
The Core Residency is fully subsidized. Private bedroom and private studio with bedding and linens, shared living spaces, laundry, a black and white darkroom, groceries, and communal dinners prepared by an in-house chef. Transportation from the Hudson and Pittsfield train and bus stations is included, with help arranging travel from Albany and Hartford airports. Accepted residents pay a $100 nonrefundable deposit and nothing else. Where funding allows, a stipend to offset residency-related expenses is offered on top.
Selection is by blind jury, so strip identifying information from your work sample. Jury composition rotates between the March and October deadlines, which means applying to both cycles puts your work in front of two different sets of readers. Several named fellowships run inside the Core cohort: the Charm City Fellow, two awards for Baltimore-area residents with a travel stipend attached; the Robert Black Foundation Fellow for a composer; and the Vincent Prize Fellow, two awards for trans and genderqueer applicants. You do not need to be eligible for any of them to apply. Millay also runs a partially subsidized Steepletop Residency at $4,000 for a full session or $2,000 for a half, same disciplines and same deadlines, which is a fallback if the Core pool passes.
The New Harmony Project — 2027 Writers’ Residency
Deadline: October 1, 2026
Website: https://www.newharmonyproject.org/residency-info
No out-of-pocket cost · Honorarium · Travel, lodging, and all meals covered · New Harmony, IN
Forty years old this year, and the residency that pays for everything. Eighteen Writers in Residence, ten days, May 20 through 30, 2027 in southern Indiana. The organization states there is no out-of-pocket expense to attend, and it means it: round-trip air and ground transportation, three meals a day plus snacks, and a private room with a full bathroom at the New Harmony Inn. Each participant also receives an honorarium, which the site does not put a number to. Ask.
For 2027 New Harmony returned to its founding cross-disciplinary shape and is convening theatre, film, and television writers in the same cohort, on the reasoning that writers now move between forms and the residency should match. You choose one primary medium at application, and that choice is binding for the cycle, so pick the medium your strongest sample lives in. The application asks for a 10-page writing sample and a full-length representative work in that medium.
The support for parent artists is unusually concrete. Childcare assistance is available for writers bringing dependents, and writers who leave dependents at home receive additional stipend money to cover costs during the residency. Eligibility is 18 or older and international applicants are welcome. Alumni can reapply, though a restriction starting in 2027 limits writers to two consecutive years before a two-year gap, and returning participants enter a second round of selection. New Harmony describes itself as not driven by products and looks for writing that interrogates hope, alongside a stated commitment to anti-racist practice. Write the application as though the collaborative culture is part of what you are applying to, because it is. Questions to applications@newharmonyproject.org.
Camargo Foundation — Camargo Fellowship, 2027-2028
Deadline: October 1, 2026, 5:59 p.m. EST
Website: https://camargofoundation.org
€3,500 stipend · No application fee · 10 weeks · Cassis, France · Open internationally
Ten weeks on a cliffside campus in Cassis, on the Mediterranean between Marseille and the Calanques, in a cohort of artists, scholars, and thinkers drawn from every discipline and several continents. Fellows receive a furnished apartment, a studio workspace, access to the Foundation’s library and research facilities, basic travel funding to and from Cassis, and a stipend of €3,500 paid at €350 a week. There is no application fee and nothing to pay on arrival.
Two sessions are available for this cycle: fall 2027 runs September 8 through November 17, and spring 2028 runs February 23 through May 4. Performance artists, choreographers, and theatre directors are named among the eligible disciplines, so a playwright who works across forms has a clear path in. The bar is five years of sustained professional practice and a mature body of work. Collaborative applications of up to three people are accepted.
Read the program’s central distinction before you write a word of the proposal: Camargo prioritizes research over production. The Foundation does not fund materials, equipment, or shipping of work, and it is not a place to build or rehearse something. It is a place to read, look, walk, interview, sit in an archive, and let a project change shape. A playwright whose next piece requires French sources, Mediterranean history, marine science, migration, or any subject that lives in that part of the world has a real case here. A playwright who wants ten quiet weeks to finish a draft has a weaker one.
One piece of timing worth acting on: the Foundation has said this is the final fellowship awarded through a public open call before it moves to a new selection process beginning in 2027. If you have been meaning to apply to Camargo someday, someday is October 1. The Foundation’s own site renders poorly to automated tools, so confirm the deadline and application requirements by loading the fellowship page in a browser before you build the submission.
Playwrights First Award — 2026-27 Season
Deadline: October 1, 2026
Website: https://www.playwrights-first.com/
$1,000 first place · Professional New York reading when feasible
One note before anything else: the organization’s own site says October 1 and at least one widely circulated aggregator says September 30. The gap is a day and the cost of guessing wrong is your whole submission. Send it by September 30.
Playwrights First has been recognizing emerging playwrights since 1993 on a deliberately narrow premise: one award, one play, chosen for the writing rather than for the production it might generate. The winner receives $1,000 and a professional reading before a New York audience when the organization can mount one. The reading is conditional on feasibility, stated plainly on their site, so the guaranteed part of this prize is the cash and the credential. The award targets playwrights of unusual promise.
The detailed submission instructions live on a How to Submit page that blocks automated retrieval, so go to playwrights-first.com and click through before you prepare anything. Confirm the fee, the length requirements, and the produced/unproduced rules there rather than relying on secondhand listings, because this is an award whose guidelines have shifted over the years and the aggregators lag. The submission window opened August 1.
Southeast Missouri State University — Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival
Deadline: October 1, 2026, or when the cap fills. Portal opened September 1.
Website: https://semo.edu/colleges-departments/arts-media/conservatory/lanford-wilson
$15 full-length, $10 short · All fee waiver requests honored · $750 stipend · Travel and housing · World premiere for the winner
The single most useful thing to know about this festival is its subject requirement, and it is unusual enough to be a genuine opportunity rather than a constraint. Lanford Wilson develops work that primarily features characters between the ages of 15 and 30. Full-lengths need at least four characters in that range. Short plays need at least two. If you have written a play about young people that keeps losing to plays about middle-aged people at every other contest, this is the room where that stops being a disadvantage.
Five full-length plays and seven short plays are selected. Full-length finalists receive a $750 stipend paid on arrival, travel and housing, a professional director and a BFA cast for a staged reading, and an all-access festival pass. Short play finalists receive a $100 stipend if they attend, plus housing, festival access, and a staged reading with a professional director. The festival runs May 23 through 29, 2027 at the Dobbins Conservatory on SEMO’s River Campus in Cape Girardeau, with a substantial conference component of workshops and masterclasses led by working professionals.
The grand prize is what separates this from most university festivals. One full-length play receives a world premiere production in the 2027-2028 Dobbins Conservatory Mainstage Season, plus consideration for publication by Concord Theatricals with royalties comparable to other plays in the Concord catalog. That is a production and a licensing life, not a reading and a certificate. Last year’s winner, Sally Seitz’s Six Inches Above the Knee, premiered in February 2026 and was commissioned by 20th Television’s Emerging Playwrights program for series development.
Full-lengths cost $15 to submit and are capped at the first 400 scripts, so the October 1 date is soft and the cap is the real deadline. Short plays cost $10 with no submission limit and run 12 pages or 12 minutes maximum. Both categories require original, unpublished, unproduced work in standard stage play format, 12-point font, double-spaced, with numbered pages. Fee waivers are available and the festival states that all requests will be honored, and student submissions are free, which makes the fee effectively optional for anyone who needs it to be. The festival is under new leadership this cycle, with Charles Goforth and Tim Nicolai as Co-Artistic Directors and founding Executive Director Kenneth L. Stilson returning. Questions go to tnicolai@semo.edu.
Durango PlayFest — 2027 Festival
Deadline: October 1, 2026, or at 200 submissions. Window opened August 1.
Website: https://durangoplayfest.org/submit-a-play/
$25 fee · $500 stipend plus airfare, lodging, and meals · Durango, CO · Continental US residents
Everything paid and a hard cap of 200 submissions. Those two facts together make this one of the better odds-to-benefit ratios in the fall. Selected playwrights receive a $500 stipend, airfare, lodging, and meals for festival week in southwest Colorado, with two public readings of the play and time to work on the script between them. Two readings matters more than one. You get to hear a change land.
The specs are narrow and they are the first thing to check. Dramas and comedies only, no musicals at this time. Running time roughly 90 to 110 minutes, which translates to 80 to 110 pages. Cast of one to six characters. Readings run without intermission and use minimal props, sound, and lighting, so a play whose effect depends on design is a poor fit for the room even if it fits the page count.
Eligibility is residents of the continental United States. The script must still be in development with no prior production and none scheduled before the 2027 festival. Playwrights previously featured at PlayFest wait a year before submitting again. The fee is $25 and submissions go through the SurveyMonkey portal linked from the submit page. Because the 200-script cap can close the window before October 1, treat the cap as the deadline. Questions to durangoplayfest@gmail.com.
The Jokes On Her — Annual Comedy Prize
Deadline: October 1, 2026
Website: https://www.jokesonher.org/submit
$5,000 grant plus an industry reading in NYC · Women, women-identifying, and femme writers · US or Puerto Rico · 21+
Five thousand dollars for a funny play, awarded by an organization that exists specifically to counter how rarely comedies by women get produced. The winner receives a $5,000 grant, an industry reading in New York, and a Q&A appearance. Real money plus a room full of people who can hire you is a rarer combination at this award level than it should be.
Eligibility is tight in three directions and each one disqualifies people every year. The prize is for women, women-identifying, and femme playwrights. You must reside in the United States or Puerto Rico. You must be 21 or older at the time you submit, not 18.
Scripts must be original full-length comedies never produced or published. Developmental readings and workshops are fine and will not disqualify you. An option or a scheduled production will, which means a play a theatre has picked up for next season is out even though it has not opened. Submit through jokesonher.submittable.com. The site does not publish a reading fee. Submissions opened August 11, so you have four weeks left in a seven-week window.
Baryshnikov Arts Center — 2027 Residency
Deadline: October 2, 2026
Website: https://baryshnikovarts.org/residency-program/
$2,000 stipend · No fee · New York, NY
BAC hosts up to 20 artists in residence each year working in dance, music, theatre, multimedia, or any combination. The 2027 window opened August 31 and closes October 2, with decisions by December 19.
Residency artists receive either one or two weeks of studio space with up to 48 hours of exclusive use per week, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, a $2,000 stipend regardless of residency length, an opportunity for an invited work-in-progress showing, and professional video and photo documentation. The documentation is worth more than most artists expect. Good footage of a work in progress is what gets the next presenter to say yes.
Applicants must be 22 or older at the time of application and cannot be enrolled in high school, undergraduate, or graduate study during the residency. Applicants are not restricted by geography, but travel and accommodations are your responsibility, and international participants handle their own visas, travel, living, and housing. Note that the flat $2,000 stipend means a two-week residency pays the same as a one-week residency, so factor that into which you request.
Amplify Arts — 2027 Fellowship
Deadline: October 4, 2026, 11:59 p.m.
Website: https://www.amplifyarts.org/events-blog/2027-fellowship
$10,000 in project support · No fee · Omaha and Council Bluffs metro only · Theme: Migration
A regional fellowship most playwrights outside Nebraska and Iowa will never see, which is precisely why it belongs here. Up to three fellows receive $10,000 in project support plus individualized mentorship from arts professionals and a cohort-based feedback structure across a twelve-month term running January 2027 through January 2028. There is no application fee and no formal education requirement, which is rarer at this dollar figure than it should be.
The geography is exact and it is the whole gate. You must be based in the Omaha and Council Bluffs metro area, defined as Washington, Douglas, Cass, Sarpy, and Saunders counties in Nebraska, and Pottawattamie, Mills, and Harrison counties in Iowa. Applicants must be at least 19. Individual artists apply, and so do collectives and collaborative groups with a sustained history of working together, which opens the door to a devising company or a writer-director pair.
Preference this cycle goes to projects exploring Migration and how movement shapes communities, environments, and collective futures. Read that as an invitation rather than a restriction. It is broad enough to hold displacement, immigration, climate, labor, family history, and the ordinary fact of people leaving one place for another, which is most of dramatic literature. The application is an artist statement, a project description, a project budget, a work sample, and a works cited page, submitted through Submittable. Review runs in four phases: eligibility check, panel scoring, interview selection, then staff interviews and final selection. Amplify runs a virtual information session on September 9 and office hours on September 15 and 17, and publishes application guides in English and Spanish. Go to the info session. At three slots, the interview stage is where this is decided.
Sesame Workshop — Writers’ Room, 2027 Cohort
Deadline: October 5, 2026, 12:00 p.m. EST. Applications open September 7.
Website: https://sesameworkshop.org/our-work/fellowships/writers-room/
Free to apply and attend · Up to 6 writers · US citizens and permanent residents, 21+
Children’s television is an underused entry point for playwrights and Sesame Workshop runs one of the few structured programs in it. Up to six writers are selected. The program provides eight three-hour instructional sessions, three one-hour mentoring sessions, and fifteen office hours across the period, which runs February through June 2027. Select participants see their scripts performed in a live table read.
No application fee and no participation cost. No stipend is published, so budget accordingly. The value here is instruction, mentorship, and a credential inside a company that hires. The program runs virtually with an in-person finale in New York City, and you must commit to all sessions plus that finale.
The disqualifiers matter. US citizen or permanent resident, 21 or older, and if you have written more than six episodes for a produced network or streaming series you are out. The submission is small and specific: one professionally formatted original script of no more than twelve pages, kid-friendly for ages up to 12, using no Sesame Street intellectual property, plus a two-page maximum resume, a 100-word concept description, and a 250-word personal statement on your interest in children’s media. The window is four weeks. Draft the twelve pages before September 7.
PEN America — U.S. Writers Aid Initiative, Fall Cycle
Deadline: Opens September 15, 2026, closes October 5, 2026
Website: https://pen.org/us-writers-aid-initiative/
No fee · Playwrights explicitly eligible · Peer-committee review
Playwrights are named in the eligible group alongside fiction and nonfiction authors, poets, translators, and journalists. The professional credential PEN accepts for a dramatist is a full-length play performed in a theater by a professional theater company, which is a clean checkable standard.
This is not rolling. PEN runs three cycles a year: spring opens March 15 and closes March 31, summer opens June 1 and closes June 15, and fall opens September 15 and closes October 5. Applications received by a deadline are reviewed before the last day of that month. A volunteer committee of literary peers reads every application, and finalists must supply documentation supporting their stated need before funds are released.
The fund is for acute financial need following an emergency. Apply in the cycle closest to the crisis rather than waiting to make a better case.
Fulbright U.S. Student Program — 2027-28 Competition
Deadline: October 6, 2026, 5:00 p.m. ET national deadline. Campus deadlines are earlier.
Website: https://us.fulbrightonline.org/applicants
Full grant with stipend, travel, and health benefits · US citizens with a bachelor’s degree
The early-career companion to the Scholar program and the right door for a playwright a few years out of an MFA. Creative and Performing Arts projects fall under the Study/Research grant category and are available in nearly every country where Study/Research grants are offered.
Eligibility is US citizenship, a bachelor’s degree by the grant start date, and no PhD for non-student applicants. The experience guideline for artists is roughly seven years or less of professional work, the inverse of the Scholar program. If you are currently enrolled at a US institution you must apply through your campus Fulbright Program Adviser, and campus deadlines run weeks to months ahead of October 6. Find your adviser in September, not October.
A Creative and Performing Arts application needs a concrete plan for what you will make and who abroad will help you make it. Vague cultural immersion loses to a named collaborator, a named theatre, and a named body of work you are going there to study. Read the country summary for your target before you write a word.
Djerassi Resident Artists Program — 2027 Season
Deadline: October 9, 2026
Website: https://djerassi.org/apply/application-guidelines/
One month at no cost to the artist · Woodside, CA · Scripts accepted under Literature
Djerassi accepts scripts. The Literature category explicitly covers drama alongside fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and the work sample allowance for scripts is up to 30 pages double-spaced in a single PDF. The residency is one month on a 583-acre ranch in the Santa Cruz Mountains above Woodside, offered at no cost to the artist. Shortened or partial residencies are not available, so do not apply unless you can clear a month.
The supported disciplines are choreography, literature, music composition, visual arts, media arts, technology, and science. That mix is deliberate, and the cross-disciplinary conversation over dinner is a large part of what people come away with. This is a place to be around a composer and a molecular biologist for four weeks, not a place to hide.
The window opened September 1 and closes October 9, so you have about five weeks from publication. Application questions go to apply@djerassi.org. Confirm the current application fee and notification date directly with the program, since the guidelines page publishes neither.
Great Plains Theatre Commons — 22nd Annual New Play Festival
Deadline: October 15, 2026. Window opened September 1.
Website: https://gptcplays.com/the-conference/how-to-apply-2/
$10 fee · $750 stipend plus travel, hotel, and most meals · Anonymous reading
GPTC in Omaha runs one of the best-value new play festivals in the country and reads more than 750 scripts a year to fill five slots. The 2027 festival runs May 23 through 29, 2027. Selected playwrights receive travel, hotel, most meals, local transportation, and a $750 stipend, and the play is assigned a professional director, cast, dramaturg, and design team. Attendance for the full week is mandatory, not encouraged.
The reading process is fully anonymous. GPTC states that none of the readers who review and select the plays will know who wrote them, which means your name, your MFA, and your production history do not help you here. Strip identifying material from the script itself.
Check the content restrictions first. Scripts must run a minimum of 30 pages. One-acts and full-lengths both qualify. No musicals and no plays for young audiences, both flatly excluded. No professional production, though other development is fine. One play per playwright per year, and a script submitted in a prior year may be resubmitted. The $10 fee is paid by PayPal alongside the application. GPTC states it welcomes disabled artists to apply. Questions to commons@gptcplays.com or 402-205-4882.
Theatre 33 at Willamette University — 2027 Season
Deadline: October 15, 2026
Website: https://arts.willamette.edu/theatre33/play-submissions/
Pacific Northwest playwrights, Canada included · Salem, OR · Two development tracks
The regional restriction is the whole opportunity. Theatre 33 reads only playwrights from the Pacific Northwest, and it counts Canada, which most American regional programs do not. Writers who have moved away are still eligible and are asked to explain their connection to the region in the application. If you grew up in Portland or Vancouver or Boise and now live in Brooklyn, say so and say how it shaped the work. This is the rare call where a biographical detail you usually leave off a cover letter is the qualifying credential.
Two engagement formats, and they are substantially different in scale. The 3 X 33 Series gives a playwright 70 hours of rehearsal with a dramaturg, director, actors, and designers, culminating in a workshop production with four performances and audience feedback. Seventy hours with designers in the room is more development time than most nationally known conferences provide. The Pop-up Series is the lighter track: 16 hours of rehearsal with a director and actors, audience feedback sessions, and three concert reading performances.
Cast size runs from two to six actors. Doubling is permitted if you supply a doubling list. Solo shows are not accepted, which rules out a category that most small companies quietly prefer. Scripts at any stage of development are welcome, but a draft you have submitted before will not be read again, so send something new or send something meaningfully rewritten. The application is an online form covering your script proposal and its history, a statement of artistic purpose, the play’s current status, and a bio or resume. The site publishes no submission fee and no stipend figure, so ask about both. Playwrights hear back within four months.
The Soliloquist Journal — Fall 2026 Issue
Deadline: October 20, 2026. Issue publishes October 25.
Website: https://thesoliloquistmagazine.my.canva.site/
No fee · No payment · Theme: The Anatomy of Forgetting
The Fall issue is built around the mechanics of memory loss, chosen and unchosen. The editors want raw and specific work tracing what has been lost, blurred, or deliberately buried, and the published subthemes read like assignments worth taking: selective erasure, the things we forget on purpose; phantom memory, the ache that lingers after the thing itself is gone; the unreliable archive, misremembering as its own act of creation; inherited forgetting, family silences and generational gaps; and the slow fade of aging, illness, and distance.
They read soliloquies alongside poetry, which makes this an unusually natural home for a monologue that works on the page. Up to five original unpublished poems or soliloquies, maximum 40 lines each, plus a 50 to 70 word third-person bio.
Email the work as a single Word or PDF document to thesoliloquistmag@gmail.com with the subject line “Fall 2026 Submission – [Your Name].” Note that the journal’s Canva-hosted site can be slow or unreadable in some browsers. The call is also posted on the UPenn CFP board if you need a second look at the guidelines.
Downtown Urban Arts Festival — DUAF 2027
Deadline: October 26, 2026
Website: https://www.duafnyc.com/submit
No fees of any kind · $1,200 to $2,000 playwright stipends plus $1,000 prizes · New York City
Entering its 25th year, and on the economics alone the strongest short-and-mid-length opportunity in this issue. No submission fees and no participation fees. Selected playwrights receive stipends of $1,200 for a short work or $2,000 for a full-length. On top of that, three $1,000 awards go to best full-length, best short, and audience favorite. The festival runs in June 2027 in Manhattan.
What DUAF supplies beyond money is a production apparatus most self-produced writers cannot buy: director and actor stipends paid by the festival, mentoring, casting assistance, technical design, rehearsal space, and administration of the Equity Showcase Code so you can legally use union actors. That last item alone justifies the application.
Two length categories. Short works run under 45 minutes. Full-length works run up to 70 minutes, which is shorter than the usual definition, so a 110-minute play fits neither box. DUAF wants new or existing work with minimal prior exposure, and imposes an exclusivity window: no concurrent New York City production within 30 days before or after the 2027 festival. Apply through the online form with three uploads, a single document containing bio, synopsis, and runtime, the complete script as a PDF, and a photo of yourself as a JPG.
Eclectic Full Contact Theatre — Patchwork Play Festival 2027
Deadline: October 31, 2026
Website: https://www.eclectic-theatre.com/patchworksubmisions.html
No fee · Two $250 awards · Chicago · Theme: Alienation
Nine one-acts get full productions at The Edge Theater on North Broadway in Chicago, running February 26 through March 7, 2027. A panel of Chicago theatre professionals awards $250 to the best production and a separate $250 audience award goes to the festival favorite. Nine productions is an unusually large slate for a one-act festival, which means your odds here are better than the prize money suggests.
The theme is Alienation and it is a real filter rather than a suggestion. Read it as broadly as you like, but the play has to answer to it.
Memorize the technical restrictions. Maximum 30 minutes. No musicals. Previously unproduced, though staged readings are permitted. No copyrighted music unless you own the rights or hold written permission, which is the single most common reason short plays get pulled from festivals after selection. A playwright may submit up to two scripts per year but only one play per playwright will be programmed per festival season. Note the typo in the theatre’s own URL, “submisions,” which is correct as printed above.
Dayton Playhouse — FutureFest 2027
Deadline: October 31, 2026. Early-bird fee tier ends October 14.
Website: https://www.daytonplayhouse.com/submissions
$20 early, $30 after October 14, half price for Dramatists Guild members · $500 to the winner plus $500 more for production · Travel and lodging covered
Thirty-plus years running and still one of the most unusual weekends in the American theatre. Six unproduced full-length plays are selected and presented across a single festival weekend, some as staged readings and some as full dramatizations, each followed by public adjudication in front of the audience by a panel of theatre professionals brought in for the purpose. You sit there and listen to people take your play apart in a room full of strangers. Writers either love it or never do it twice, and the ones who love it come back.
Dayton Playhouse covers travel and lodging for finalists who attend. The winner receives $500 and the other finalists receive $100 honorariums. The winning playwright then grants the theatre permission to produce the play as part of a subsequent mainstage season, which carries an additional $500 payment and six performances. Add it up and the winner is looking at $1,000 plus a fully produced run, which for a $20 entry fee is among the better returns on this list.
The rules are firm. Original work in English, full-length, minimum 75 minutes, unpublished and never produced for a paying audience. Staged readings do not disqualify you. No musicals and no plays for young audiences. Up to two scripts per playwright. Submit the anonymized PDF script with a synopsis and character breakdown through the online form or by email to futurefest@daytonplayhouse.com.
Two practical notes. The fee doubles on October 15, so a script sent by the 14th costs $20 rather than $30, and $10 rather than $15 if you are a Dramatists Guild member. And the Playhouse website blocks automated tools, so the figures above reflect the structure of the immediately preceding cycle, which has held steady for years. Load the submissions page in a browser and confirm the current fee tiers before you pay.
Premiere Stages at Kean University — 2027 Premiere Play Festival
Deadline: November 1, 2026, 11:59 p.m. Window opened September 1.
Website: https://premierestagesatkean.com/play-festival/guidelines/
No fee · $10,000 plus a full Equity production · NY, NJ, CT, PA, DE affiliation required
The best risk-adjusted opportunity in this issue for anyone in the New York metro region. Premiere Stages charges nothing and says so plainly: there is no application fee for any Premiere Stages program. The winner receives a $10,000 award and a full Equity production. The runner-up receives $3,000 and a 29-hour staged reading. Remaining finalists receive $1,000 each. That is a professional AEA production and five figures with no barrier to entry beyond writing the play.
Submit early. The 2025 festival drew 805 submissions narrowed to 78 semifinalists and four finalists. Waiting until Halloween drops your script into the deepest part of that pile, and Premiere Stages encourages submitting early in the window.
Eligibility is regional and it is the whole ballgame. Playwrights must have strong affiliations with the greater metropolitan area, defined as New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Delaware surprises people and gets dropped from most secondhand listings. Affiliation is broader than current residency, so writers who grew up, trained, or worked professionally in those states should apply and make the connection explicit.
The script rules disqualify a lot of good plays. Full-length only, cast of no more than eight, unpublished and unproduced with readings and workshops permitted. No productions or publications scheduled through September 2028, a longer forward window than almost any other contest, which eliminates scripts already committed elsewhere. Musicals, adaptations, and solo shows are all ineligible. One submission per playwright. Premiere Stages does not accept scripts written in any part or enhanced in any way by generative AI. Submit as a PDF through Submittable; hard copies are not read. The alumni list runs through Dominique Morisseau, Kimber Lee, George Brant, Sarah Gancher, Lindsey Ferrentino, Rogelio Martinez, Keith Josef Adkins, Kate Cortesi, Keelay Gipson, Matthew Paul Olmos, Gloria Majule, and Vincent Terrell Durham. Premiere Stages also advocates directly with other theatres to secure subsequent productions for festival writers, which is not boilerplate. Finalists are selected in spring 2027, readings happen in June 2027, and the winning production goes up in 2028, so this is a two-season commitment. Questions to pfsubmit@kean.edu, including eligibility questions, which they answer directly. Script feedback is available on request after finalists are announced.
The Black List — Cassian Elwes Independent Screenwriting Fellowship, 2027
Deadline: November 1, 2026
Website: https://blcklst.com/programs
All-expenses-paid Sundance trip · Unrepresented feature writers only · Under $5,000 lifetime writing income
Fourteenth year of the fellowship. The Black List selects ten screenplays imbued with an independent spirit and passes them to producer Cassian Elwes, whose credits include Mudbound, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, and Dallas Buyers Club. Elwes picks one fellow. That fellow gets an all-expenses-paid trip to the 2027 Sundance Film Festival, January 21 through 31, plus meetings and events with Elwes on the ground.
Eligibility rules out most working professionals. You must be an unrepresented feature writer who has earned less than $5,000 in aggregate across your entire film and television writing career. Contest winnings and script sales both count against that ceiling. If you have a manager or an agent, you cannot apply.
The submission mechanism carries a cost the fellowship itself does not. All Black List programs require your project to be hosted on the Black List site with at least one pending or completed evaluation at the time of submission. Hosting and evaluations are separately priced, so confirm current rates at blcklst.com before you plan around this. The Black List makes fee waivers available for qualified applicants. One further calendar note: the NRDC Climate Storytelling Fellowship, which awards $20,000 each to three writers for feature screenplays or pilots engaging climate change, has historically closed in the first week of December, just past this issue’s window.
Ensemble Studio Theatre — EST/Sloan Project Commissions
Deadline: November 3, 2026. Window opens September 15.
Website: https://www.ensemblestudiotheatre.org/est-sloan/submissions
New play commissions $5,000 to $10,000 · Rewrite commissions $2,000 to $5,000 · Science subject matter required
The best-paying commission on this list and the application is two pages. You submit a one-page description or a simple outline of the project plus a resume or biography for each collaborator. That is the whole thing. New play commissions run $5,000 to $10,000, rewrite commissions for existing scripts run $2,000 to $5,000, and regional development grants for theatres run $2,000 to $5,000.
The subject requirement is the gate. Your play has to engage hard science, technology, or the culture around them: mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, neuroscience, anthropology, archaeology, computer science, software development, engineering. Science fiction is excluded. Plays centered on a medical condition or disease are excluded. Plays for children are excluded. EST is looking for work about how scientific thinking shapes people and about the pressures scientists and engineers live under.
Individuals, creative teams, and regional theatres may all apply. Repeat submissions are not accepted unless EST invites you back or you have substantially revised the proposal, so make the first one count. EST currently cannot develop musicals past the commission stage, though musicals are accepted for consideration. Applicants are notified by late summer 2027.
Women in Film x The Black List — Episodic Lab 2027
Expected deadline: Early November 2026. Applications have opened October 1 in each of the past two cycles.
Website: https://womeninfilm.org/programs/writing/
$40 per script for non-members · Los Angeles residency required · Maximum $25,000 in prior TV writing income
Flag this as a where-to-look entry, not a confirmed posting. WIF has not published the 2027 cycle dates. The pattern across the last two cycles is identical: applications open October 1 and close in the first days of November. Watch the programs page starting October 1.
The Lab selects six to eight television writers and runs one month of in-person sessions in Los Angeles, roughly two hours twice weekly on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Content covers script development, pitching, mock writers’ rooms, and industry roundtables. Everyone who completes the Lab becomes a WIF Fellow for the year, which carries twelve months of support beyond the Lab itself.
Prior cycles required applicants to be women, non-binary, gender-nonconforming, or trans, writing solo or as a team, with no more than $25,000 in prior television writing compensation. Los Angeles residency was required along with availability for evening and weekend sessions. Non-members paid $40 per script with up to three scripts allowed as separate applications. WIF’s larger Writer Fellowship for episodic and feature writers has opened October 1 and closed the following January in recent cycles, with an extended deadline for members at the Creative level and above.
EMERGENCY & MEDICAL FUNDS
These have no deadline, or a rolling one. They are here because the month you need them is never the month you go looking. Bookmark them now.
Dramatists Guild Foundation — Crisis Relief Grants and Bridge Grants
Deadline: Rolling through December 14, 2026. The 2027 cycle opens January 4.
Website: https://dgf.org/crisis-relief-grants/ and https://dgf.org/bridge-grants/
Bridge Grants $500 · Crisis Relief amount varies · No fee · Theatre writers only
DGF runs the two funds built specifically for our field. Crisis Relief Grants respond to a recent, unexpected, substantially disruptive emergency: natural disaster, housing emergency, legal emergency. Bridge Grants are a flat $500 for non-emergency gaps, meaning utility bills, medication, childcare during a production or residency, or the stretch between paying gigs. Separating those two in your head matters, because applying to the wrong one costs you a month.
Eligibility is the same for both. You must be a theatre writer aged 18 or over, meaning playwright, composer, lyricist, or librettist. You must live and work in the US or a US territory. You must have less than $15,000 in combined bank accounts. And you must meet three of seven criteria establishing you as a working dramatist, a list that includes completed full-length works, enrollment in a degree program, and membership in a professional association. Neither fund covers student debt or credit card debt.
Applications go through Submittable and determinations typically come within a month. First-time applicants are prioritized, repeat applicants from the past twelve months are generally not funded, and the Bridge Grant is a one-time award per person. Since 2020 DGF has granted more than $4 million to theatre writers across 44 states. Reach the grants office at grants@dgf.org or (212) 391-8384 x1007, Monday through Thursday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET and Friday 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Foundation for Contemporary Arts — Emergency Grants
Deadline: Rolling, year-round. Apply 8 to 10 weeks before your project date.
Website: https://www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/grants/emergency-grants/guidelines/
$500 to $3,000 · Average grant $2,200 · No fee · Three-year wait before reapplying
Read the name carefully, because this is not a personal hardship fund. FCA Emergency Grants pay for the confirmed public presentation of completed experimental work: performances, exhibitions, screenings, readings, installations. Eligible costs include artists’ fees, airfare, accommodations, materials, shipping, and fabrication. FCA receives about 100 applications a month and makes 15 to 20 grants.
You must live in the US or a US territory with a US Tax ID, you must have a confirmed opportunity with specific dates already on the calendar, and you cannot be enrolled in a degree-granting program. Individual artists and representatives of collectives both qualify. The panel reads your work sample and project description to judge whether your practice fits FCA’s experimental mission, so send the boldest thing you have made.
What FCA will not fund: non-project living expenses, anything already paid for, residency fees, deposit and registration fees, and commercial gallery exhibitions. Apply eight to ten weeks out. Applications submitted less than six weeks before the project date may not get a decision before opening night. Recipients wait three years to apply again. Additional travel support is available through the Trust for Mutual Understanding for US cultural exchange with Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Authors League Fund
Deadline: Rolling. Applications reopened September 8, 2026.
Website: https://authorsleaguefund.org/apply/
Non-taxable grants, not loans · No fee · Playwrights and librettists explicitly eligible
The Fund was closed for part of the summer and reopened September 8, so confirm the portal is live before you assemble documents. Playwrights are named. The Fund supports writers whose full-length plays have been produced in mid-size or large theaters, and as of 2024 it extended the same standard to librettists and book writers of musicals and operas. Support arrives as a non-taxable charitable grant, not a loan. Nothing is repaid.
The Fund exists for illness, medical bills, eviction, and lost income, and describes its assistance as modest and temporary. Support cannot be used for professional expenses: not writing time, not equipment, not production costs. If that is what you need, look at FCA above or a state arts council project grant instead.
Three ways to apply: online through Formstack, by email with a Word document attached, or by mail to the Fund’s Brooklyn office. Recipients may reapply after twelve months, though further support is not guaranteed. A Crisis Advice Guide is posted on the site for people who need help immediately. Phone (212) 268-1208.
Entertainment Community Fund
Deadline: Rolling
Website: https://entertainmentcommunity.org/am-i-eligible-help
Emergency financial assistance · No fee · Theatre is a covered industry
Formerly The Actors Fund, and considerably broader than the old name suggested. The Fund covers theatre, film, television, radio, music, dance, opera, and circus, with emergency financial assistance aimed at essential living expenses: health care, housing, and utilities, specifically to prevent eviction or a service shutoff. Every application is reviewed by a social worker who will also connect you to public benefits and other resources you may not know exist. Other programs include the Entertainment Assistance Program, funeral and burial assistance, financial wellness and tax help, and the Conrad Cantzen Shoe Fund.
The earnings test is the hard part. General applicants need documented professional earnings for five consecutive years, 2022 through 2026, with at least three of those years at $10,000 or more. Applicants aged 60 and over need 20 years of performing arts income with at least ten years at $5,000 or more. Start pulling tax returns and 1099s now, because assembling that file takes longer than the application.
The published eligibility language centers performing arts professionals and does not name writers specifically, so call your regional office before assuming you are out. Create or activate a Fund Portal account at portal.entertainmentcommunity.org, digitize every required document as a PDF, and submit a complete application. Only complete applications are processed. Phones: 800.221.7303 for the East, 312.372.0989 for Chicago, 888.825.0911 for Los Angeles. The insurance counseling alone is worth a call for any writer navigating marketplace coverage between contracts, and it costs nothing.
Max’s Kansas City Project — Emergency Grants
Deadline: Rolling
Website: https://maxskansascity.org/emergency-grants/
$500 to $1,000, one time · No fee · New York State residents · Paid directly to creditors
One-time grants of $500 to $1,000 for self-employed artists with a steady work history who hit temporary hardship. The fund covers housing, medical, and legal costs. Psychotherapy is excluded unless the provider is an MD. Payments go directly to your creditors rather than to you.
The application is old-fashioned and heavy and everything goes by mail. No email. You need a personal letter explaining the need, five to ten work samples, three character references with phone numbers and no email addresses, and one referral letter from a colleague or patron who has known you at least three years. Then the financial file: bank statements, rent or mortgage statements, utility and phone bills, loan statements, credit and debit card statements, plus income verification through client invoices, unemployment letters, pay stubs, and benefit documentation.
Incomplete applications are not considered. Applicants must be New York State residents, with exceptions for people affiliated with Max’s Kansas City. Awardees may be asked to donate artwork or provide a testimonial. Build this packet on a good day and keep a copy, because reassembling it during a crisis is close to impossible.
The Haven Foundation
Deadline: Rolling
Website: https://www.thehavenfdn.org/guidelines/
No fee · Playwrights and theatre explicitly covered · Freelance income test applies
Endowed by Stephen King, the Haven Foundation supports freelance artists in the entertainment industries after a career-threatening emergency. Theatre is a listed media category and the covered roles include playwrights, screenwriters, directors, producers, choreographers, musicians, and artists.
Two tests govern eligibility. First, freelance status: at least 40 percent of your annual income over the past three years must come from your own creative work. Second, the triggering event: a recent, unforeseen emergency that has significantly and adversely affected your ability to work. You must be a legal US resident and the work must have been done in the United States. The Foundation states plainly that it cannot help with hardship arising solely from lack of employment, poor sales, or poor business practices.
Applications go by mail to the Foundation’s Brewer, Maine office with all supporting materials attached. Incomplete applications are not reviewed. The Foundation says it makes every effort to expedite decisions but does not publish a turnaround time. Once approved, you sign and return an award letter before funds are disbursed.
JOBS — THEATRE, LITERARY & ACADEMIC
September through November is the front half of the academic hiring season for positions beginning fall 2027. If a teaching line is anywhere in your plan, this is the stretch when most of them post.
Assistant Professor of Dramaturgy and Theatre History — American University
Deadline: Initial review begins October 5, 2026
Website: https://jobs.chronicle.com/job/38018183/assistant-professor-of-dramaturgy-and-theatre-history/
Tenure-track · $95,000 to $100,000 · Washington, DC
The strongest verified academic posting on the fall board for anyone with dramaturgical training. American University’s Department of Performing Arts is hiring at tenure-track assistant professor rank with an August 1, 2027 start. The posted salary sits well above the national median for an entry tenure-track humanities line and reflects the DC cost of living.
The department is explicitly open to both scholars and practitioners, which matters for playwrights who built a dramaturgy practice inside professional theatres rather than through a PhD. Required qualifications are an advanced degree in Theatre or Performance Studies, expertise in dramaturgy and theatre history, and a record of university teaching.
The application is unusually short for a tenure-track line: a CV, a letter of interest, and one sample syllabus. Three documents. No dossier, no teaching portfolio, no research statement. Initial review begins October 5 and the posting metadata shows an October 24 expiration, so do not treat “open until filled” as an invitation to submit in November.
Artistic Director — Studio Theatre, Washington, DC
Deadline: No published deadline; listing active as of late August
Website: https://www.mcaonline.com
$195,000 to $210,000 · Search run by Management Consultants for the Arts
Studio Theatre is one of the anchor institutions of contemporary play production in the United States, built on a four-theatre campus in Washington’s 14th Street corridor and known for producing new and recent work rather than a classics-heavy season. The posted range is at the top of what regional artistic directorships pay.
For a playwright moving into leadership, this is the rarer kind of artistic directorship: an institution already committed to living writers, so the job is executing a new play mandate rather than arguing for one. The posting describes the role as cultivating Studio’s artistic vision and planning seasons of contemporary theatre.
Management Consultants for the Arts is running the search. That means a slower and more formal process than a direct application, and it also means your materials get read by people whose job is to read them.
Artistic Director — Syracuse Stage
Deadline: No published deadline; the Chronicle listing carried a September 6, 2026 expiration
Website: https://www.mcaonline.com/searches/artistic-director-syracuse-stage
Starting at $180,000 plus full benefits · Syracuse, NY
Syracuse Stage is a LORT house with a resident season and a long partnership with Syracuse University’s Department of Drama. The artistic director shares organizational leadership with the managing director and owns creative direction: season composition, new play commissioning and development, and the theatre’s relationship with the surrounding community.
The salary starts at $180,000 and includes medical, dental, and vision insurance, life insurance, a 403(b), and paid time off. “Starting at” means the number is negotiable upward for the right candidate.
Applications go through Management Consultants for the Arts, not through Syracuse Stage. If the MCA search page is still live when you read this, the search is still open. Two major artistic directorships at contemporary-work houses are open simultaneously this month, which is worth noting for a different reason: new artistic directors reshape literary and artistic staff within their first two seasons. Watch both institutions through 2027 for the associate-level postings that follow.
Literary Manager — Milwaukee Repertory Theater
Deadline: Open until filled
Website: https://milwaukeerep.com
$40,000 to $43,000 · Full-time exempt · Milwaukee, WI
Verify before you invest time. The posting PDF is live on Milwaukee Rep’s own server and carries no publication date. Email lmerwin@milwaukeerep.com to confirm the position is still open before you write the cover letter.
The job is a full literary manager portfolio at a major LORT theatre: script acquisition and database maintenance, coordinating readings, overseeing the New Play Development Program, supporting season planning through script evaluation and licensing coordination, facilitating dramaturgical work with directors, and cultivating playwright relationships. That is the complete set of duties rather than a partial line, which makes it a real credential for someone moving from literary associate to literary manager.
The salary is $40,000 to $43,000. State it plainly: that is low for the scope of work and roughly typical for regional literary management outside New York and Los Angeles. Playwrights Horizons posted its Literary Manager line at $70,000; Gulfshore Playhouse posted an Artistic Associate at $50,000 to $55,000. Requirements include two or more years of theatrical literary management experience, a valid driver’s license, and a background check.
Playwrights Horizons — Theatrical Fellowship Program, Artistic/Literary Track
Next expected deadline: Late March 2027
Website: https://www.playwrightshorizons.org/site/jobs/fellowship-program
$17 per hour · 32 hours per week · New York, NY · No degree required
Listed here so you can build toward the spring application rather than discover it three days before it closes. The current cohort is in place through June 2027, and the next window will close in late March on the pattern of recent years.
The Artistic/Literary fellowship runs 32 hours a week, the largest allocation among the non-stage-management tracks. Marketing, General Management, and Development each run 24. All fellows are paid $17 an hour. Beyond the placement, fellows get seminars with industry professionals, resume reviews, tickets to Playwrights Horizons productions and other theatre, and a capstone project presentation.
The eligibility terms are more open than most literary pipeline positions. No prior experience required. No bachelor’s degree required. Non-US citizens may apply, though work authorization and a Social Security Number are needed for payment. The one exclusion is full-time enrollment during the fellowship. For a playwright who wants inside a literary office without the credential to be hired into one, this is the mechanism. Interviews run late April through mid-May with offers by late May.
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