PlayPenn’s flagship program brings together theatre artists to celebrate the creation of new plays. This year’s conference playwrights are a celebrated collective of noteworthy theatre artists from both the United States and Australia. The playwrights develop their plays through in-depth workshops with directors, dramaturgs, designers, and professional actors from the local theatre community. Ample rehearsal time is interspersed with significant amounts of time for writing and for meetings - both formal and informal - between the writers and their creative teams. Each of the six plays is given two free public readings at Philadelphia’s Drake Theatre, one at the conference midpoint and the other at the end of the development period.