Mission of New Plays for Young Audiences

For twenty-six seasons*, New Plays for Young Audiences has developed some of the most promising new works for family audiences. Supported by NYU Steinhardt’s Program in Educational Theatre, NPYA was founded in 1998 by the late Lowell and Nancy Swortzell as a supportive space to nurture and evaluate new TYA scripts. 

Our series offers students, faculty, and theatre professionals the opportunity to explore new ideas and structures in plays and musicals for children, teens, and families. Held over the course of three weeks in June, each script in the series rehearses for one week and culminates in two rehearsed readings for the community.  

Our work honors the history of the Provincetown Playhouse where the early plays of Eugene O’Neill, Susan Glaspell, and Edna St. Vincent Millay were first presented. However, this series changes focus by devoting its efforts to the development of new works for children, youth, and family audiences written by both NYU students and noted authors in the US and abroad. 

In conjunction with the series, the Program in Educational Theatre runs a graduate course, Theatre Practices: Problems in Play Production, the Development of New Plays, which studies theories and methods of play development utilizing the series as a laboratory. 

New Plays for Young Audiences has supported scripts that have gone on to be presented both nationally and internationally, reaching thousands upon thousands of family theatergoers. Audiences at this reading help in the process of bringing life to the next script to join the long list of those developed at New Plays for Young Audiences. 

Visit our website  for more information on the series.

Thank you for sharing your time and helping us nurture this work!

*There was no series in 2020 due to the pandemic.