Yale Rep Establishes Center for New Theatre

New-play commissioning and development are about to ramp up at Yale Repertory Theatre, which is establishing the Yale Center for New Theatre with a $2.85 million grant from the Minnesota-based Robina Foundation.

With the center, which Yale Rep and the Yale School of Drama announced Wednesday, the theater will up the number of its commissions of plays and musicals, and host residencies, readings, workshops, and full productions of commissioned pieces. The center will also help to establish playwrights' residencies as lecturers at the drama school, which will develop curriculum in writing for musical theater.

The grant will not all be spent in New Haven, however. It includes a $600,000 fund, to be administered by the center, to support other nonprofit theaters producing world-premiere or second productions of plays commissioned by Yale Rep through the center.

Current Yale Rep commissions include a Dostoyevsky adaptation by Robert Woodruff and Bill Camp; original plays by David Adjmi, Hilary Bell, Marcus Gardley, Amy Herzog, Naomi Iizuka, Rolin Jones, Elizabeth Meriwether, Octavio Solis, Kate Walat, Anne Washburn, and Marisa Wegrzyn, and a musical by Adam Bock and Todd Almond.

Pulitzer Prize winner Paula Vogel, recently appointed Eugene O'Neill Professor and Chair of Playwriting at the drama school, has been named playwright in residence at Yale Rep.