INDIANAPOLIS: The New Harmony Project (NHP) has announced a new structure for its PlayFest Indy festival. The new-play festival, which launched in 2024 as a week-long celebration, will now be a year-long series. Throughout 2025-26, five American playwrights will each receive play development and a public, concert-style reading at one of five Indianapolis theatres: American Lives Theatre, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Indianapolis Shakespeare Company, Phoenix Theatre, and Summit Performance Indianapolis. The evolved festival aims to position Indianapolis as a national hub for groundbreaking theatrical storytelling.
“Developing a new play takes time, trust, and deep creative partnership,” NHP executive artistic director Jenni Werner said in a statement. “This new structure allows us to give each story the space it deserves, while reinforcing Indianapolis as a destination for new plays. If you want to see the next great American play, come to Indianapolis, where we are building the future of the American theatre.”
Each partner theatre has selected a playwright from NHP’s alumni network whose voice and work aligns with that theatre’s mission and artistic vision. Over a four-day rehearsal period, playwrights will collaborate with directors, dramaturgs, and actors to refine their scripts, followed by a public reading and optional post-show discussion. All readings will be free and open to the public, with ASL interpretation.
As a season highlight, NHP will co-produce the world premiere of WAD by Keiko Green (Sept. 11-28) with American Lives Theatre, described as “a darkly funny and emotionally charged drama” about “a whip-smart young woman [who] forms a pen-pal relationship with a man on death row, a seemingly innocent connection that spirals into a gripping power struggle.” It was first developed at 2024’s PlayFest Indy.
Plays receiving readings in the upcoming season include One Party Consent (September 12) by Chicago-based actor and playwright Abbas Salem with American Lives Theatre; Hireath, or when Pluto was a planet (November 8) by Queens-born Puerto Rican queer playwright and performer Jayne Deely with Summit Performance Indianapolis; SaFronia’s Daughter (Jan. 9, 2026) by Chicago-based director, playwright, deviser, and producer India Nicole Burton with Phoenix Theatre; this is a face (March 23, 2026) by trans and queer writer J.C. Pankratz with Indiana Repertory Theatre; “I” is for Invisible (April 17, 2026) by Cherokee Nation citizen and award-winning performer, playwright, advocate, and Native Voices artistic director DeLanna Studi with Indianapolis Shakespeare Company.
The New Harmony Project is an Indiana-based incubator with a mission to nurture writers in the development of scripts and new works that interrogate the complexity of hope. Since 1986, NHP has supported hundreds of writers whose work has gone on to Broadway, film, television, streaming, and regional theatres across the country.
