Playwriting

Production Opportunities

First-year playwrights participate in The Collaborative Process (DRAM 50a) and also write a one-act play for the New Play Lab (DRAM 51b) in the spring. In the spring and summer of the first year, playwrights write a full-length play that is then redrafted, rehearsed, and staged in the first term of their second year (Langston Hughes Festival). By the third year, playwrights will have written a roster of full-length plays, and one of those plays is selected to be fully designed and produced in repertory in their final term (Carlotta Festival of New Plays). All plays are subject to the approval of the chair prior to rehearsal.

Drama 50

Drama 50 is a 3-week classroom workshop in theatrical collaboration and composition for first-year actors, designers, directors, dramaturgs, and playwrights. The purpose is twofold: to challenge each student artist to develop their flexibility and fluency as a contributing member of a professional theatrical collaboration, whether as an actor, designer, director, dramaturg, or playwright; and to challenge the ensemble to collaboratively create an original emotionally and intellectually charged theatrical event.

New Play Lab

First-year playwrights in the spring semester participate in a three-week lab on new one-act plays with actors, directors, and dramaturgs. The New Play Lab has no design elements and minimal technical support, and is presented exclusively for the faculty and students of the School of Drama.

Langston Hughes Festival of New Work

The Langston Hughes Festival of New Work incorporates and advances the principles of the New Play Lab, bringing playwrights, directors, actors, dramaturgs, and stage managers together to work on a new play. The Festival embraces the significant artistic, technical, and managerial challenges of producing new plays in rotating repertory. The process is managed by students from the Theater Management and Technical Design and Production departments, and is presented to a public audience.

Carlotta Festival of New Plays

Students in all disciplines collaborate on the production of three new plays written by third-year playwrights. The Festival’s name honors Carlotta O’Neill who designated that the proceeds from the publication of Long Day’s Journey Into Night by her husband, Eugene O’Neill, would support playwriting at Yale University. The Festival embraces the significant artistic, technical, and managerial challenges of producing new plays in rotating repertory, in circumstances similar to those in the professional theater. The third-year playwrights are paired with third-year Directors, who lead their peers from the Acting, Design, Sound Design, Dramaturgy, and Stage Management departments to fully realize the playwright’s work. The Festival is managed by students from the Theater Management and Technical Design and Production departments, and performances are presented to a paying public audience.

Yale Cabaret

The Yale Cabaret is an independent, student-run theater company in residence at Yale School of Drama. It provides an additional, strictly extracurricular, outlet for the exploration of a wide range of material, including self-scripted material, company-devised original work, adaptations, and musicals. The Playwriting department believes that the Yale Cabaret is an essential part of life and practice at Yale School of Drama and encourages all its students to participate in the Cabaret - not only as writers, but also as theater artists wearing a variety of hats. Playwrights must also balance that participation with the demands of their writing schedules and assigned rehearsals. Participation in a Cabaret production is subject to the prior approval of a student’s department chair. All students must seek prior approval from the department chair for participation in any area of the Cabaret. No student with an incomplete and no second- or third-year student on probation may participate in the Yale Cabaret in any capacity.

Yale Repertory Theatre

Yale Repertory Theatre is the multiple Tony Award-winning professional theater in residence at Yale School of Drama, which produces an annual season of new and classic plays as well as the No Boundaries performance series. In a relationship analogous to that of a medical school and a teaching hospital, nearly every student at the School of Drama receives a meaningful production assignment at Yale Rep during their three years of training.