Connecticut's Eugene O'Neill Theater Center has revealed their fall developmental programming, which seeks to expand their support of new work outside of their traditional summer season. The fall program offers an array of services and resources, including the newly created National Playwrights Conference Writers Retreats, individualized residencies, and more.
This fall will see the residencies of Tony Award winner Tom Kitt and Pulitzer Prize finalist Adam Rapp. Kitt will return to campus in November with collaborator Daniel Goldfarb to work on their new musical, The Ghost Writer, adapted from Philip Roth's novel in collaboration with Red Yes Studio. It will feature a book and lyrics by Goldfarb with music and lyrics by Kitt.
Rapp will present an excerpt of his new play The Night Fawn, directed by NPC Artistic Director Melia Bensussen, with Works & Process at Guggenheim New York. Held October 26 at 7 PM, the evening will also offer a conversation moderated by Bensussen about Rapp's career and the process of creating this new play, which he wrote in its entirety as the 2025 NPC Artist-in-Residence. The workshop will culminate in a public presentation of the play at the O’Neill on October 30th at 7 PM in the Rufus & Margo Rose Theater Barn.
The National Playwrights Conference Writers Retreat will also be held over the course of two weeks in October, welcoming Dominic Finocchiaro, with his play s(c)e(n)e[n], and Alexa Derman, with her play Beauty. The NPC Writers Retreat offers selected playwrights from the previous year’s NPC Finalist List a focused residency on the O’Neill’s seaside campus. Throughout the week, writers receive dedicated time and space to create, round-trip travel, meals, dramaturgical support from the literary team, and conversations with artistic director Melia Bensussen.
This season, the Eugene O'Neill Center has also partnered with Works & Process to collaborate with their students on the Waterford campus throughout the year to develop their work for their public presentations in New York City at the Guggenheim. The first collaborative residency will host the internationally renowned MacArthur choreographer, director, and painter Shen Wei in September.
The Shen Wei Dance Arts company spent a week at the O’Neill developing a new American Dance Festival commission, in partnership with The Pocantico Center and in conjunction with a retrospective at the Katonah Art Museum. That week-long residency concluded with a Studio Showing for invited guests on the O’Neill’s campus, prior to a presentation at the Guggenheim Museum on September 28th.
The LeeLa Dance collective will also reunite at the O'Neill in late November with the cast of Speak. Rukhmani Mehta, Rachna Nivas, Michelle Dorrance and Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards have reimagined the critically acclaimed Kathak and tap production for a 2026 New York premiere, expanding the musical score and choreography to further explore the intersection of these two art forms. Speak will be presented as part of the Harkness Mainstage Series: Women Move the World at the 92nd Street Yin New York City in 2026.
The O'Neill Theater Center will also host a two-week long puppetry residency, The Jim Henson Foundation Puppetry Residency. It will present Parched, a puppet-based performance by Andy Manjuck and Dorothy James, and Jean Marie Keevins and Neda Izad's You Have Arrived, a non-verbal, visual work weaving together puppetry, movement, and an evolving large-scale pop-up book to tell urgent stories of climate migration in ways accessible to all ages. You Have Arrived will feature an original score by Bahar Royaee, dramaturgy by Helena Pennington, and direction by Keevins.
The fall programming will conclude with the Winter Cabaret, the fourth annual event feature four nights of uplifting holiday classics from O’Neill favorites and Broadway stars, under the direction of CAB artistic director, Grammy and Emmy Award winner, John McDaniel. The series will be held in the O’Neill’s Rufus and Margo Rose Theater Barn from December 11-14.
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