2026 Conference Kick-Off & Fundraiser

Tickets Are Very Limited For This Event

Calling all past, current, or future PlayPenn supporters! Join us for an intimate evening of food and drink as kick-off our 2026 New Play Development Conference. Celebrate the bold and diverse voices shaping the future of American theater and support PlayPenn's year-round programs and programming!

Why Support PlayPenn?

New plays begin as acts of imagination. Before there is language, form, or certainty, there is time spent wondering what a story might become. PlayPenn exists to protect that space, believing that the future of the American theatre depends on places where artists are trusted with time, ambition, and care.

For more than twenty years, PlayPenn has operated as a research and development center for new work, rooted in Philadelphia and connected nationally.

Our role is not production and not presentation. It is early, sustained investment at the moment when work is most fragile and most alive. We build the conditions that allow writers to experiment, to fail safely, to revise deeply, and to discover what a play truly wants to be before it enters the marketplace.

Much of what audiences encounter later on major regional and national stages begins long before press, premieres, or recognition. It begins in rooms where time is protected, where artists are paid to think, and where the pressure to resolve meaning too quickly is removed. That is the work PlayPenn does, largely out of view.

The future of the American theatre is being imagined now, in spaces most audiences never see. Supporting PlayPenn is a way to stand behind that work and help shape what comes next.