Highlights from the 2025 New Play Conference

Video by ThinkMotion Video

SUBMIT YOUR SCRIPT TODAY FOR THE 22ND ANNUAL NEW PLAY FESTIVAL

Click here to submit your script between September 1 and October 15.

JOIN US FOR THE 2027 NEW PLAY FESTIVAL MAY 23-29, 2027

The Annual New Play Festival includes:

  • Theatre workshops, luncheon panels, and PlayLab staged readings of scripts selected from over 750 submissions from across the country.
  • National dramaturgs who work with each playwright, providing support before, during, and after the Festival.
  • The Design Wing, which brings emerging designers from across the country to contribute to the script development process from a visual perspective.
  • The Young Dramatists Fellowship Program, which provides local high school playwrights with access to some of the country’s top plays and playwrights.

How To Send Us Your Play – Great Plains Theatre Commons

Click here to learn about the 2026 New Play Festival playwrights and guest artists.

GPTC is grateful to the Douglas County Visitors Improvement Fund, Humanities Nebraska, the Mutual of Omaha Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Nebraska Council for the Arts, and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment, whose support makes the New Play Festival possible. 

The New Play Festival began in 2006 as the Great Plains Theatre Conference with the Metropolitan Community College (MCC). In 2020, GPTC was redefined and renamed as the Great Plains Theatre Commons, an independent nonprofit that functions in vibrant partnership with MCC to continue the annual New Play Festival each spring at the Swanson Conference Center on MCC’s historic Fort Omaha Campus. (Map)