Exploring Pedagogical Strategies in a New Play Development Program

The impetus for a new play development program at the University of Central Florida (UCF) came from our strategic plan to enrich our partnership with the regional Orlando Shakespeare Theater (Shakes) and create an educational program that would become a springboard for undergraduate (BA and BFA) and graduate (MA and MFA) theatre students into professional work. Cynthia White, then on the faculty at UCF and director of PlayFest at Shakes, a week-long new play development festival, offered to lead a task force to help identify connections with PlayFest and shape an educational strategy for new play development at UCF. Having had a significant career working with emerging playwrights, including her role as director of play development at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, White envisioned this new program, Pegasus PlayLab, as an advancement opportunity for playwrights—whose work had been workshopped at PlayFest—to receive developmental productions on UCF’s campus and involve students as collaborators.Since its inception in 2018, PlayLab has expanded its definition of new work development and collaborative models, resulting in less linear curation and more diverse opportunities for students.1 Recognizing that a flexible and reflective approach is crucial for nurturing new work, we began to explore how this mindset could meaningfully influence student learning.2 These questions guided us in designing a new play development program: What skills do students build through preprofessional and development processes that enhance their overall growth as artist scholars? What strategies support the growth of the playwright and deepen the growth of student collaborators, and how do these strategies provide pedagogical insight into flexible, reflective learning? How does play development integrate university culture and community, and what learning opportunities emerge at this critical intersection? And finally, how do we promote this emerging practice in institutional culture?The American Association of Universities and Colleges identifies four “essential learning outcomes” in its Liberal Education and America’s Promise report.3 Among its pillars for college-level learning—knowledge of human cultures and the physical world and natural world; intellectual and practical skills; personal and social responsibility; and integrative and applied learning—the fourth provides pedagogical alignment with new play development. Integrative and applied learning coursework challenges students to synthesize knowledge acquired in broad-based and specialized study and to apply it to complex issues in unfamiliar contexts. Rooted in this concept, new play development inspires students to integrate learned principles in a fluid creative process and reflective practice, fostering what educational researcher Ken Bain calls “deep learning.”Deep learning coursework is designed to engage students in highly personal and experiential problem-solving—championing the navigation of failure and feedback, collaboration, mentorship, and an investment that is larger than the class itself. Bain posits that deep learning occurs “when students have thought a great deal about the nature of their own intellectual growth and have begun to formulate profound ideas about its meaning.”4 Grounded in this pedagogy, the strategies that we developed for PlayLab over eight years focus on strengthening the relationship between educational theatre and professional theatre organizations, nurturing interinstitutional models, and promoting community engagement. In alignment with Bain’s methodology, this practice underscored the necessity for developing skills necessary for professional work yet not traditionally centered in most university course structures. In this contribution, we explore how PlayLab can be used as a model for this type of integrative and applied learning—promoting deep learning through the cultivation of varied collaborative models. We also reflect on and consider the challenges of building a new play development culture in university settings.In a new play development setting, what skills do students build through preprofessional processes that enhance their overall growth as artist scholars?Providing a scaffold for professional readiness by fueling “a driving curiosity that feeds a lifetime of study, creativity, and contributions” is one of the core responsibilities of a university.5 Among MFA programs, a common realization of this strategy is in university partnerships with regional professional theatre companies. UCF’s MFA Acting partnership with Shakes is similar to those of University of San Diego and The Old Globe or Florida State University and Asolo Repertory Theatre—with students spending their first two years of study entirely at UCF, then moving to full-time practical application of their academic work at the professional company. While this partnership has been integral to the transition from graduate scholarship to practical application, it also opens pathways for our collaborative strategies to evolve. By modeling PlayLab on an existing professional format, we offered both undergraduate and graduate students opportunities to integrate theory with creative practice in a guided, mentored environment.PlayLab is held yearly on UCF campus during the “Summer A” semester (mid-May to mid-June) and includes three workshops selected from play submissions through NPX, a National New Play Network program, and one developmental production of a play that has been in a workshop at Shakes. Curated as a theatre festival, PlayLab pieces are chosen in conversation with each other, to encourage rich dialogue between students as the plays evolve in their unique settings. Funding for the festival supports campus housing and a stipend for invited playwrights during their workshop (ten days) or the entire rehearsal (three weeks) of a fully produced play. Each piece is supported by a creative team, carefully shaped to include undergraduate and graduate student actors, designers, stage managers, dramaturgs, and assistant and associate directors, working closely with a faculty member or a guest director. In the spirit of Eugene O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference, design students work with the creative teams, collaborating on an artistic vision for a hypothetical design of the three workshops and assisting a faculty designer on a fully produced show. Each workshop receives two performances, followed by guided conversations with the audience, playwright, cast, and creative team. The developmental production runs four performances, with two audience talkbacks.Experiential learning is nothing new, especially in the humanities, but it is a vitally important piece of the deep learning model, leading to meaningful understanding of material. Placing an emphasis on existing models for new work development (O’Neill’s National Playwrights Conference), as well as connecting students to professional institutions (Shakes), we challenge students to produce work at a professional level, with encouragement and mentorship, when necessary, from faculty and guest artists. In eight years, four new plays—Human Error by Eric Pfeffinger, #GodHatesYou by Emily Dendinger, Affinity Lunch Minutes by Nick Malakhow, and Bite Me by Eliana Pipes—have transferred to UCF from the Shakes PlayFest program; all of them went on to have world premieres at regional and New York theatres. The partnership with PlayFest has evolved as well, offering students the opportunity to contribute to the creative process. Students are encouraged to participate in PlayFest’s script selection as peer reviewers and invited to serve as dramaturgs, stage managers, and assistant directors to work with professional actors and directors. This type of partnership, however, entirely depends on the commitment of both faculty and the professional organization, mutual support, and the alignment of shared goals and learning objectives.What strategies support the growth of the playwright and deepen the growth of student collaborators, and how do these strategies provide pedagogical insight into flexible, reflective learning outcomes?Just as Bain highlights the importance of introspection in fostering deep learning, dramaturg Heather Helinsky advocates the use of continuous reflection to guide new play development.6 The model for PlayLab includes multiple reflection checkpoints. Through regularly scheduled design and production meetings several times a week during the festival, postshow talkbacks, and discussions, students and visiting artists are asked to engage with the work through individual and collaborative reflection. In recent years, postfestival reflective conversations have inspired PlayLab’s curation, now including interviews with playwriting finalists in consideration. These interviews are formatted as conversations with the playwrights to address their intentions for play development, as well as their goals and motivations in collaborating with university students. As a result of this ongoing effort to assess the efficacy of our program, our professional partnerships have expanded to other theatre companies and universities, generating interinstitutional groups and shaping frameworks for students to contextualize their work and increase the festival’s impact.Spells of the Sea, a musical for ages four and older, started as a highly successful podcast run by the University of Texas at Austin undergraduate students Guinevere Govea and Anna Pickett. To develop this musical, PlayLab brought together the artistic director of the Metro Theater Company, who led Spells of the Sea’s workshop at UCF; a faculty member from Texas who served as a dramaturg; a freelance producer; and a Los Angeles composer. Most important, it laid the groundwork for exciting collaborative possibilities between UCF and Texas students. To enrich their collaborative experience, they reached out to young audience members and invited them to a one-day creative exchange during the workshop. This multilayered collaboration prompted a deeper exploration of diverse perspectives on the story and offered a unique opportunity for the playwrights to connect with the intergenerational audience.Unlike previous PlayLab collaborations, which primarily centered playwrights and their work in an early stage—often with no guarantee of future production—this project was already on a clear path to a full staging. During a virtual symposium cohosted with the University of California, Riverside, an MFA student there, Karly Thomas, pointed to the challenge for emerging playwrights to find new spaces to produce or continue to workshop their work after the initial development opportunity. In contrast, the collaboration with UCF allowed the Texas undergraduate students this type of continuity in a new setting, extending the exploratory stage of their work and anticipating its professional premiere. This fostered a distinctive learning environment in which students observed how artistic practices could adapt as the project advances toward a fully staged production, underscoring the value of deep learning practices when students receive the chance to see creative work extend beyond its initial conceptual phase. It also presented unique challenges, as professional objectives sometimes collided with student learning.Considering Helinsky’s directive to remain flexible in process, we continued to seek strategies that support both playwright and student growth and navigate the varied goals of a full creative team. Our subsequent collaboration with North Shore Music Theatre on Dance Night offered another opportunity to explore the intersection of process and product expectations in a framework that was stylistically different yet structurally similar to that of Spells of the Sea. The invited team included the playwright, composer, and a producer; because the play was in an early stage, however, the producer’s presence functioned more as moral support than as a guiding developmental influence, reinforcing the project’s emphasis on artistic exploration over immediate production goals. What distinguished this project pedagogically was the playwright’s background as a choreographer, which grounded the storytelling in movement rather than text. This deepened our understanding of dramaturgical analysis, transforming the workshop into a laboratory that challenged students to integrate choreography into a staged reading format and thus sparked valuable dialogue about embodied storytelling and alternative dramaturgical methods. In doing so, it offered students a meaningful opportunity to influence an evolving piece and to practice adaptive thinking and fluid, boundary-crossing creativity.Taken together, these collaborative models—whether with another academic institution or a team of professional artists—offer a framework for a strategic pedagogy aimed at forming flexible, integrative learning environments. These experiences not only expose students to diverse creative processes, but also inspire them to navigate ambiguity, collaborate across disciplines, and reflect meaningfully on their contributions. Deep learning does not emerge from isolated mastery of content but from repeated opportunities to integrate knowledge, shift perspectives, and solve real problems in context.7 By embedding students in evolving collaborative strategies, PlayLab strives to create space for this cognitive flexibility to flourish.How does play development integrate university culture and community, and what learning opportunities emerge at this critical intersection?Selecting plays and projects for every festival, we pay particular attention to the intersection of new play development and community building. Jan Cohen-Cruz defines a community-based production “as a collaboration between an artist or ensemble and a ‘community’ in that the latter is a primary source of the text, possibly of performers as well, and definitely a [significant] portion of the audience.”8 In community-based productions or workshops, the focus often pivots from the singular voice of the playwright to a collective form that involves student artists and community participants—emphasizing authentic inquiry and a sense of belonging. Bain’s framework envisions learning as a “passion-driven adventure,” in which the exploration outweighs the course itself—a principle embodied in community-based projects designed to involve students in complex, real-world problems and promote work that matters beyond the classroom.El Wiz and Sombra del Sol were among the new musicals that we workshopped at PlayLab through collective creation with local artists with the purpose of connecting with bilingual audiences. An homage to The Wizard of Oz, El Wiz followed young Dorothy, who was expelled from her Puerto Rican home after a hurricane. Sombra del Sol, a musical for young audiences created by UCF students and alumni, took intergenerational audiences on a magical journey that transformed a university courtyard into the Amazon rainforest. Both works uplifted Latin communities in Orlando; and although the playwrights still played a significant role in the creation of the original texts, the development of these works was largely collaborative and community building.This practice of elevating diverse voices also guided the series of our workshops Building a Shared Home and Daring to Dream, which included our students and neurodivergent members of the Orlando community. Funded by the Pabst Steinmetz Foundation, these workshops assembled young adults, some with intellectual and developmental disabilities, to originate a theatrical piece exploring identity, friendship, and resilience. All participants engaged with various forms of storytelling—among them music, writing, and visual art—to weave their personal experiences into a collective work. As in previous cases, flexibility and reflection emerged as essential principles in the creation—principles that are equally critical in inclusive artistic practices, in which students of all abilities learn to collaborate and create across professional, educational, and community spaces. These opportunities to interact with diverse communities help students develop a sense of civic duty and practice empathetic response and ethical decision-making.How do we promote this emerging practice in institutional culture?As PlayLab looks to the future, we recognize both the opportunities and the complexities of embedding new play development into the fabric of university life. Our mission has shifted from expanding a partnership to redefining the value of partnership and cultivating pedagogy built in artistic flexibility and exploration. Creating a campus culture that fully supports this vision requires persistent effort and institutional commitment. Summer programming often exists on the periphery of semester-based academic life, making it difficult to achieve full student and faculty buy-in. At UCF, disciplinary tracks such as BFA design tech and stage management have integrated participation in PlayLab into their curricula. But performance-based and generalist tracks (BFA Acting and Musical Theatre, and BA Theatre Studies), which account for the school’s largest theatre student population, have no obligation to participate in PlayLab, opening a rift between the curriculum and the play development program. This disconnect discourages audition turnout and perpetuates harmful stigmas—that new, developing plays are somehow “lesser” works.As we strive to bring visibility to new work in educational spaces, we continue to enrich our programming to encourage student artistic growth and seek ways to legitimize play development as a vital part of the academic theatre curriculum. Although UCF’s School of Performing Arts does not have a playwriting degree program, and faculty mentorship can become an issue, we look for ways to uphold the legitimacy of play development among our student writers. PlayLab has hosted the work of UCF student playwrights Caroline Hull and Gian Arellano, who have gone on to produce multiple professional works. Also, PlayLab has invested in the continued engagement with alumni by inviting them as guest playwrights, directors, and facilitators. Through all these experiences, we hope to build a model for meaningful educational practice in which students are not merely acquiring skills but engaging in the generative, uncertain, and collaborative processes that define real artistic inquiry. As playwright Steven Dietz compellingly reminds us, the power to “initiate,” “invigorate,” and “innovate” is integral to new play development.9 It is our goal to build on the strategies outlined in the case studies we have discussed to shape a practice that harnesses their impact—nurturing artistic growth and immersing students in deep, lasting education that equips them to shape the field, not merely to enter it.