HowlRound Theatre Commons Marks 15 Years With Expanded Programs

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HowlRound will also launch the New Play Development Commons, and more.

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HowlRound Theatre Commons has revealed new activities to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of its founding. The initiatives include expanded learning programs, a new play development commons, a special Journal column, and more.

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“It is an honor for Julia and I to steward this global knowledge commons through such a monumental anniversary,” co-director Ramona Rose King shared. “This year is our first as an independent entity, building on years of partnership and field-wide collaboration, and we’re excited about the offerings we have for theatremakers and cultural workers around the world.”

HowlRound is expanding its learning programs, formally launching Learning Circles as a core offering this Spring. Co-director Julia Schachnik said, “Learning Circles are a natural extension of our commitment to connect theatremakers through knowledge sharing and collective inquiry. What excites me most about the program is how it activates our archive of digital content, bringing it into facilitated conversations between values-aligned theatremakers from around the world who might not otherwise intersect. It’s an opportunity to create space for timely discourse, allowing our community to translate ideas into practice.” This Fall, the program will expand from virtual gatherings to two cohorts that will meet in person, one in Boston and one in New York City. Applications will open this summer.

Additional in-person convening work will happen in June, when HowlRound gathers the playwrights and artistic directors who are part of the current cohort of the National Playwright Residency Program for a two-day convening in New York City. While the Mellon Foundation’s general support of HowlRound will continue, this convening marks the culmination of the program, a long-running partnership with Mellon that began in 2013. Since its founding, the program has provided years of salary, benefits, and artistic support to 37 playwrights at 36 theatres around the United States. The convening will culminate in a celebration of the program’s lasting impact on the field.

HowlRound’s commitment to supporting writers and new work for the stage will take a new form as it incubates the New Play Development Commons, a group of leaders from organizations focused on new play development from around the United States who are coming together to share resources, create new opportunities and partnerships, and collectively advocate for the impact of their work to be more widely recognized in the field.

HowlRound is also partnering with the Doris Duke Foundation to support the documentation of Creative Labor, Creative Conditions, a national campaign bringing together coordinated activations across the United States to center artists in a conversation about the future of artistic labor. HowlRound will work with event organizers across the country to livestream activations and publish written reflections in order to expand access to this important conversation.

Later this year, with the support of Trust for Mutual Understanding, HowlRound is partnering with Independent Theatre Hungary for Building Cross‑Border Theatre Networks for Marginalized Voices, a documentation project that will livestream select theatre festivals in Central and Eastern Europe and organize a virtual convening of individuals and organizations working in underrepresented or marginalized areas of practice.

In addition to new, ongoing digital offerings that began earlier in 2026—like Kristin Marting ’s video project TORCHES, which documents 30+ years of downtown New York performance, and I Don’t Know How They Do It!, an anonymous diary column tracking a week in the life of theatre artists with caregiving responsibilities—HowlRound has announced a special HowlRound Journal column in honor of the fifteenth anniversary: Moving in a Common Direction. Moving in a Common Direction is a multivocal essay column that showcases the different paths theatremakers are taking to channel us toward a more just and sustainable future. In each essay, two theatremakers offer their contrasting practices that address shared issues. By amplifying contrasting approaches to similar issues, Moving in a Common Direction surfaces the multiple strategies needed to move our field forward. These pieces will roll out through the summer and fall.

HowlRound continues to welcome content contributions from anyone in the global theatre community at www.howlround.com/contribute-content .

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/off-broadway/article/HowlRound-Theatre-Commons-to-Launch-Expanded-Learning-Programs-and-More-20260528)._