NEW YORK CITY: New Dramatists has announced the newest additions to its resident playwright company: Dave Harris, Nazareth Hassan, DJ Hills, Regan Moro, May Treuhaft-Ali, and Bailey Williams. They will be in residence through June 2033. These theatre artists were selected by a seven-person committee of New Dramatists’ current residents, alumni, and outside theatre professionals out of a pool of 799 applicants after undergoing a highly competitive 10-month review and consensus-based decision-making process. They will kick off their seven-year residencies in September 2026 at the annual New Playwright Welcome, an evening of readings and celebration.
NEW YORK CITY: National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT) has announced finalists for the 38th annual Festival of New Musicals in New York City. The festival is scheduled for October 22-23 and will take place at New World Stages in Manhattan’s midtown neighborhood. This year, a committee of 21 theatre professionals selected eight new musicals out of 518 submissions. The 2026 Festival Committee members include faculty members from Carnegie Mellon, NYU Tisch, Atlantic Theater Company, and Center Theatre Group, as well as freelance directors and dramaturgs. The musicals selected for this year’s festival include:
- Black Girl in Paris, a musical about Sally Hemings as she suddenly finds herself in Paris in the early days of the French Revolution. The book and lyrics are by AriDy Nox, a playwright, librettist, lyricist, and emerging composer and novelist based in New York, and music is by Jacinth Greywoode, a Brooklyn-based composer, orchestrator, and music director.
- BLUDLINE: A Hip-Hop Odyssey reimagines Homer’s epic through thrilling live hip-hop and R&B as Trojan War hero Odysseus battles monsters and temptations to reach home, while his son Telemachus must find his own strength in the shadow of a father who may never return. Book, music, and lyrics are by Fermin Suero Jr., a Grammy-nominated audio engineer, mixer, and vocal producer, and Pete White, a composer and music director.
- The (Disaster) Marathon of 1904 recounts one of the most unbelievable events in Olympic history, as told by Pheidippides, the ancient Greek runner who died running from Marathon to Athens. Marathon’s book is by Tyler Joseph Ellis, and music and lyrics are by Jacob Ryan Smith and Dan Mertzlufft. Tyler Joseph Ellis is an actor, writer, and content creator based in New York City. Jacob Ryan Smith is an award-winning writer/performer/sound designer living in New York, best known for launching the viral Ratatouille TikTok musical movement as its music supervisor and arranger.
- Fouad of Nazareth is a pop-punk dark comedy musical about a teenage Palestinian New Yorker resolving a lifelong identity crisis at a summer camp. Book, music, and lyrics are by Fouad Dakwar, a multimedia artist and Jonathan Larson Grant recipient whose subversive comedy channels his Palestinian immigrant upbringing with a punk-rock twist.
- How to Play the Cello (Until You Don’t) asks what happens to artists when they can’t make art anymore? This one-person one-act is loosely based on the life of cellist Jacqueline Du Pré, whose career was cut short in her 30s due to multiple sclerosis. Book, music, and lyrics are by Benjamin Emory Larson, a playwright, composer, and lyricist based in the Twin Cities.
- Love of a Lifetime isa parody told with love inspired by the conventions of Lifetime TV holiday movies. Book, lyrics, and music are by Lara Filip, a multi-hyphenate artist based in Chicago.
- A new adaptation of The Ramayan, India’s most treasured ancient epic, enters the “Temple of American Myths” through concept records. It is created by actor and Julliard alum Manik Choksi, a frequent collaborator with Dave Malloy, Rachel Chavkin, and Ars Nova.
- Sunwatcher takes place in 1944 and is inspired by the life of “hidden figure” Hisako Koyama, a young woman and hopeful astronomer living in Tokyo under the threat of American bombs. The show is written by Isabella Dawis, with music by Tidtaya Sinutoke. Dawis is a Filipina American writer and performer from Minneapolis active in musical theatre, plays, and opera.
NEW YORK CITY: Benson Drive Productions has announced the three artists selected to participate in their inaugural BDP Edinburgh Fringe Artists in Residence program this August. Chosen from more than 400 applicants across the U.S., the selected artists include director and performer Marisol Soledad (Philadelphia), composer and librettist Mur (New York City), and Filipino American playwright Nicholas Pilapil (Santa Ana, California), who will all attend and develop a new work at the 2026 Edinburgh Festival Fringe next month.
Each selected artist will receive travel to/from Scotland and accommodations in Edinburgh, a ticket budget to immerse themselves in the Fringe ecosystem, as well as a $3,000 commission to go toward their Fringe piece. Their work-in-progress showings will be presented by Underbelly, one of the venues of the Fringe, on Aug. 25.
NEW YORK CITY: Yangtze Repertory Theatre has announced the newest members of Project YZ, the company’s artist residency program, which began in 2022. They are Sarah Mika Esser, a yonsei Japanese American director, choreographer, producer, and dance educator; and Michi Zaya, a Mongolian performer, projections designer, and director. The residents each receive a $10,000 grant, of which $5,000 is an unrestricted financial award, and $5,000 is to be used toward project-related expenses.
During the one-year residency, Yangtze Rep connects resident artists with other collaborators, offers research support, facilitates focus groups, and provides marketing support. Dramaturgical development and discussion with Yangtze’s artistic staff take place throughout the residency. Esser will work on Reliquary, a surrealist dance-theatre work that explores rituals of mourning and celebration to eulogize a miscarriage. Zaya is developing a provocative and joyful feminist work centered on the intersectionality of Asian women and femmes, the personal and social perception of women’s bodies, and Asian queerness.
Previous Project YZ resident artists include directors Nana Dakin and Rui Dun; playwrights Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin, Jesse Jae Hoon, Yilong Liu and Minghao Tu; set designer Chika Shimizu; writer and performers Đavid Lee Huỳnh and Jo Mei, writer and director Jing Dong, and performer Julia Gu.
NEW YORK CITY: Shawn Hann of Denver School of the Arts (DSA) in Colorado has been named the 2026 recipient of the Stephen Schwartz Musical Theatre Teacher of the Year Award. Presented by the ASCAP Foundation and the Educational Theatre Foundation (ETF), the award recognizes exceptional achievement in the field of high school, middle school, and elementary musical theatre education and includes a $5,000 cash award. Hann will be honored during the EdTA Awards for Excellence in Theatre Education event at the Educational Theatre Association’s Theatre Education Conference July 22-24 in New York City.
Devoting the past 25 years as Director of Theatre at Denver School of the Arts, Shawn has built a thriving program centered on artistry, leadership, collaboration, and civic engagement. Her seven-year curriculum guides students from exploratory arts to advanced, original creations, culminating in student-led productions, managing production, budgeting, PR, casting, directing, and technical design. This commitment to rigor and opportunity has led to standout productions, including five International Thespian Festival Main Stage productions, multiple mainstage selections at ThesCon—Colorado Thespians’ state conference—and seven trips to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Under her leadership, the DSA theatre department has become a beacon of excellence in Colorado and beyond.
SACRAMENTO, CALIF.: The 2026 California Journalism Awards presented by have been announced. Among the winners is American Theatre contributor Marco Antonio Rodriguez, whose essay “The Not-So-Brief, Wondrous Adaptation Process of ‘Oscar Wao,’” about the Chicago premiere of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao at the Goodman Theatre, placed second in the Fine Arts Writing/Reporting category. It was originally written for and published in Zócalo Public Square.
BRENTONVILLE, ARK.: The Children’s Theatre Foundation of America has selected the 2026 Aurand Harris Grant and Fellowship recipients. The grant, in honor of playwright Aurand Harris, was designed to benefit the field of children’s and youth theatre, and is split into grants and fellowships. Grants are awarded to companies, while fellowships are awarded to individuals.
The 2026 Aurand Harris Grant recipients include:
- Pushcart Players: CFTA funding will support purchases of projection, audio, and screen upgrades for touring productions.
- Arroyo Repertory Theatre: CTFA funding will support a multidisciplinary team, including mental health professionals for trauma-informed care and certified teachers specialized in middle school development, for The Eaton Fire Youth Theatre Project, a theatre-informed intervention for Altadena/Pasadena children devastated by the January 2025 Eaton Fire.
- Collective Consciousness Theatre: CTFA funding will support paying actors, director, stage manager, and rehearsal space, as well as covering costs for costumes and set materials for The Light, a 45-minute superhero TYA play commission exploring food insecurity by Kwik Jones.
- San Francisco Youth Theatre: CTFA funds will help cover the director, the training of four Spanish-bilingual DREAM Ensemble actors, and baby-safe props and set pieces for NIGHT SKY, SFYT’s Spanish-bilingual Theatre for the Very Young (TVY) touring production.
The 2026 Aurand Harris Grant fellowship recipients include:
- Idris Goodwin, a playwright, essayist, and storyteller, who will work on a first draft of Don’t Scare Easy, an original TYA play about two young siblings processing their parents’ divorce.
- Kennedy Naseem, an actress and theatre director, who will use the funds to create Sound of the Sea, a 30-45 minute interactive, multicultural, and sensory-friendly piece that tells the story of a girl, a glass sponge, and their sea creature puppet friends as they restore harmony to their reef.
- Ramon Esquivel, currently a dramaturg at Seattle Children’s Theatre, who will use the funds to support dramaturgical work during his sabbatical from SCT.
The selected organizations and artists will be creating their work between June 1, 2026 and May 31, 2027.
