Fellowships

The Arthur Kopit Fellowship

To honor Arthur Kopit's theatrical legacy and his contributions to the artistic and professional lives of playwrights, Peacedale Global Arts has launched a brand new playwriting fellowship.

Description

The fellowship provides financial and artistic support to a playwright of extraordinary ability and vision through a year-long residency which includes resources and program opportunities to generate new work and explore international and intercultural exchange.

Support & Activities

Financial support:

  • The Fellow receives a stipend of $10,000.

Artistic activities include:

  • A seat in Peacedale Global Arts’ New Work, NY Generative Workshop program. This program includes a rigorous 5-day writing workshop with an international group of playwrights, opportunities for artistic sharing, and cross-cultural relationship-building;

  • One private Roundtable reading of the Fellow’s work scheduled at the Fellow’s request;

  • Meetings with Peacedale staff to set and track personal fellowship goals;

  • Inclusion in the Peacedale Global Arts community with opportunities to explore international exchange.

Selection Process

Prospective fellows are nominated by theater leaders and professional artists selected by Peacedale Global Arts and invited to apply. The Fellow is chosen by a diverse group of theater professionals. The 2025 Final Selection Committee included playwrights Chisa Hutchinson, David Henry Hwang, and Rajiv Joseph.

Support

This program is generously funded by The New World Foundation.

2025-26 Arthur Kopit Fellow

Zora Howard is a Harlem-bred writer and director. Plays include BUST (The Alliance/Goodman; 2022 Susan Smith Blackburn Finalist), HANG TIME (The Flea); THE MASTER’S TOOLS (Wiener Festwochen; WTF), STEW (2021 Pulitzer Prize Finalist; P73 Productions), AtGN, and THE MOTIONS. Her work has been developed at Ojai Playwrights Conference, Stillwright, Mercury Store, and Cape Cod Theatre Project, among others. In 2020, her feature film Premature, which she co-wrote with director Rashaad Ernesto Green, opened in theaters following its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Zora is a Lilly Award and Helen Merrill Award recipient, a former MTC Judith Champion Fellow and Lark Van Lier New Voices Fellow and alumna of the P73 I-73 Writers Group. She is currently under commission from Seattle Rep, Chautauqua Theater Company, Wychwood Media and River Road Entertainment.  

Arthur Kopit (1937-2021), throughout a career spanning seven decades, authored an extraordinary string of admired, acclaimed, and award-winning stage works, beginning with Oh Dad, Poor Dad; Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet; and I’m Feelin’ So Sad, while still an undergraduate at Harvard. Other works include Indians (Tony Nominee, Pulitzer Prize finalist); Wings (Tony Nominee, Pulitzer Prize finalist); End of the World, with Symposium to Follow; a new translation of Ibsen’s Ghosts; the musical books for Nine and Phantom (both with scores by Maury Yeston); Road to Nirvana; Because He Can (originally entitled Y2K); A Dram of Drummhicit (written with Anton Dudley); and numerous one-act plays. More recent projects include Discovery of America, based on the journals of the Spanish conquistador, Cabeza de Vaca; and two new plays, Secrets of the Rich and The Incurables. Mr. Kopit was a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Lark Play Development Center, where he headed the Lark Playwrights’ Workshop, influencing and mentoring countless young playwrights. He was, up to his death, a tireless advocate for playwrights, theater makers, theater companies, and especially The Lark.