THE MORGAN JENNESS EXPERIMENTS IN PLAYWRITING FELLOWSHIP

La MaMa’s Morgan Jenness Experiments in Playwriting Fellowship offers two early career playwrights in the NYC area an artistic home at La MaMa for the course of one year. This timeline aligns with La MaMa’s 2026–2027 theatrical season: September 2026–June 2027. The fellowship seeks to encourage playwrights from underproduced communities with an emphasis on members of the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, and people with disabilities. Throughout the course of the fellowship, playwrights will work with playwright and fellowship mentor, Justin Elizabeth Sayre. Fellows will meet with Sayre on a monthly basis to discuss their work and the works of previous La MaMa playwrights such as María Irene Fornés, Jackie Curtis, Sam Shepard, Robert Patrick, Adrienne Kennedy, and many more.

La MaMa houses one of the greatest archives of Off- and Off-Off-Broadway theatre in the world, and the fellows will have access to this amazing archive as both inspiration and insight to foster experimentation in their own work. Besides connecting with La MaMa’s past, playwrights will be able to receive complimentary tickets to La MaMa’s current season, allowing them to learn from current La MaMa artists and the work created there. At the end of the fellowship, fellows will present an open reading through the La MaMa Experiments Play Reading Series. Playwrights will be awarded a $1,500 stipend for their time as Fellows.

Applications for the 2026–2027 Fellowship will open on July 1, 2026 and will close on July 15, 2026, or when La MaMa receives 150 applicants — whichever comes first. Playwrights will be asked to submit two 500-word essays and a brief section of the play they would like to work on during the fellowship and will be awarded a $1,500 stipend for their time as Fellows.

Requirements

Eligibility:

• Must be of the five boroughs of New York City
• Must NOT be enrolled as a student in a degree-granting program
• Must be a generative artist creating and maintaining control over new original work
• Must be an artist early in their career who has been generating and creating this new work as a professional/vocational artist for at least two years but less than 10 years

Required Materials:

Letter of Intent (500-word maximum)
A short essay on what you have done, where you come from and what you hope to do. Describe where you are in your journey as a playwright. How would this fellowship support your work and process? Some additional questions you may want to address include what draws you to La MaMa? What would access to the archive provide your work? What are touchstones in your work that connect with La MaMa?

Short answer question (500 words max)
What is your play about? What is its draft history and production history?

10 pages of a script
Add a brief description of the work, and if not pulling from the first scene, give a proper description of the scene or scenes prior so that the submission can be understood in the context of the larger work. (200-word max)

Application Instructions

Application submission is via google form. Form will be available here beginning July 1, 2026. Applications will be open until July 15, 2026.

Please email playwrightfellowship@lamama.org with any questions.