2026 WP Lab Application: Playwrights

WP Theater is looking for early to mid-career playwrights, directors, and producers, who crave an artistic home, a cohort of collaborators, professional support, and the resources to launch them into the next phase of their careers to be a part of the Heidi Thomas Initiative WP Theater Lab. 

The Lab provides up to fifteen artists with community, a vital professional network, entrepreneurial and leadership skills, free rehearsal space, and, most significantly, tangible opportunities for the development of bold new work for the stage.

Is the Lab the right fit for you?

The Lab is for early to mid career theater professionals, who are eager to deepen their understanding of how to develop new work, using collaboration skills while also learning how to best leverage given resources. 

• As a director, this program is for you if you have an appetite for play, a commitment to dramaturgy in the early stages of a work’s development, and you look forward to crafting stories with a new team of artists. This program is for you, if you are looking to join a community of directors at a similar stage of their career and excited for seasoned mentors to share industry knowledge, resources, and skills.
• As a producer, this program is for you if you enjoy working in teams, imagining new systems of storytelling, and are eager to build those systems with others. This program is for you if you have an appetite for creating balance between the resources a story needs in order to be told and the tangible/ financial resources of the production. 
• As a writer, this program is for you if you crave dramaturgical input and creative collaboration both from a director and producer, and if you’re ready to collaborate with storytellers in other mediums to deepen your work. This program is for you, if you’re looking for practical skills in how to strategically and holistically develop your work. 

LAB STRUCTURE

Meetings:   The lab consists of two monthly meetings–one full Lab meeting for all three cohorts on the first Monday evening of the month, and a separate, discipline-specific meeting, usually on the second Monday of the month.  These meetings are mandatory, and attendance at all meetings is the optimum means  to get the most out of your Lab experience.

You will be given the full Lab meeting and Pipeline Festival schedule at the time of your interview, if you advance to the finalist round.

Year One:   Participants will spend the first six months of the lab engaging in cohort- building activities to allow the artists to get to know one another as individuals and artistic practitioners, including collaboration work, skills-building, and career strategy sessions. It is imperative that participants prioritize attendance in these monthly lab meetings, as multiple absences will result in participants missing key building components that would prevent them from gaining the most from  the lab experience.

In the second half of the first year, we will sort the Lab into writer/director/producer pods, and devote significant time to building the bonds and collaborative skills within each pod. 

Year Two/Pipeline Festival:   Each pod will spend the remainder of the lab developing a new work together that will culminate in  a showing in the Pipeline Festival reading series. The goal of the festival is to give producers, directors, and playwrights the collaborative tools to successfully develop new work in the theater industry. The resulting Pipeline Festival reading series will present this new work to New York audiences and industry professionals. The producers, in partnership with directors and writers, will shape the festival based on the artistic development needs of each project, with budgetary and in-house physical resources from WP, under the AEA 29 Hour Reading Guidelines.

REQUIREMENTS FOR ELIGIBILITY:

• Must be an artist living within 90 minutes of WP Theater via car or rail.
• Must be able to attend evening meetings at WP Theater twice a month from October 2026 to May 2028, as well as other events throughout the 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 seasons, such as previews, performances, retreats, and other special events at WP. 
• Must be available for the Pipeline Festival (March – May 2028).
• Regular attendance is mandatory and therefore applicants should view the program as a two-year-long commitment. Lab meetings will be in person. 
• Must be aged 21 or over.
• Must not currently be in an undergraduate  program.
• Must be available for an in-person interview.

THE PARTICIPATING ARTISTS WILL:

• Receive a stipend of $4,000 on salary, for each year of Lab participation ($8000 total).
• Participate in a monthly full lab meeting led by WP Artistic Staff and Lab Liaisons.
• Participate in a monthly discipline-specific meeting led by a mentor in their field.
• Participate in events and conversations led by established artists and leaders in the field.
• Receive complimentary tickets to WP shows, invited dress rehearsals and other special events.
• Receive artistic support and professional development guidance from the artistic staff.
• Participate in The Pipeline Festival, a reading series of five new plays, written, directed and produced by the WP Lab, to be presented in the spring of the second year of the residency.
• Receive access to WP’s rehearsal space at no cost, when space is not in use