Bess Wohl, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Quiara Alegría Hudes & More Join Faculty Of The Candela Playwrights Summer Fellowship

Bess Wohl, Bill Rauch, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Martyna Majok, and Ruben Santiago-Hudson lead the 2026 faculty of the Candela Playwrights Summer Fellowship, the tuition-free program for emerging playwrights, musical theater writers, librettists, and choreopoets from Latin America, the Caribbean, and the region's Indigenous communities. The fellowship's fourth annual program takes place July 12-19, 2026 in New York City.

Bess Wohl, winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2026 Tony Award for Best Play for Liberation, joins Candela for the first time as a guest of honor at the Fellows Listening Party on Friday, July 17 at the NYU Jerry H. Labowitz Theatre for the Performing Arts, an evening in which fellows share recordings of songs from their musicals in progress. Wohl opens the evening in a conversation with Candela Founder and Co-Director Darrel Alejandro Holnes about the power of listening across her body of work, from Pretty Filthy, the documentary musical she wrote with The Civilians from interviews gathered in the field, to Small Mouth Sounds, her nearly wordless play about what an audience perceives when language falls away, to Liberation, which grew from listening to the generation of women before her.

Bill Rauch, winner of the 2025 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for Cats: The Jellicle Ball and Artistic Director of the Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), joins Candela for the first time as a guest of honor at the fellowship's graduation ceremony. Candela's guests of honor are faculty who teach in conversation with fellows over shared meals at the program's opening, welcome, and graduation gatherings. Candela fellows will attend Cats: The Jellicle Ball as part of the fellowship's theatergoing program; this summer, its Tony-winning director celebrates their graduation. Rauch is joined on the 2026 faculty by Daphne Rubin-Vega, the two-time Tony nominee who originated the role of Mimi in Rent and starred in the film adaptation of In the Heights; Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok (Cost of Living, Tony nominee for Best Play), who joins as guest of honor at the fellowship's welcome dinner; and Tony Award winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Seven Guitars), director of the Tony-winning Broadway revival of Jitney and writer-performer of Broadway's Lackawanna Blues.

Returning to the faculty are Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes, Tony nominee for Best Book of a Musical for In the Heights and author of Water by the Spoonful, and Kristoffer Diaz, Tony nominee for the book of Broadway's Hell's Kitchen and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. Both have taught at Candela since its founding in 2023.

They are joined by Patricia McGregor, Artistic Director of New York Theatre Workshop, and Benjamin Velez, 2025 Tony nominee for Best Original Score for Real Women Have Curves, among a faculty of more than 20 working artists and industry leaders.

'When I was starting out, the distance between an emerging writer and the artists working at the top of the field felt impossible to cross,' said Holnes. 'Candela closes that distance for one week every summer. Our fellows sit in rooms with the writers, directors, and producers whose work they grew up on, and they leave understanding that these careers are built, not bestowed. That knowledge is the power to move the industry forward.'

Now in its fourth year, Candela has received more than 300 applications and accepts roughly 20 percent of applicants. The 2026 cohort of 18 fellows brings the program's total to 62 fellows served since 2023. In addition to full tuition support for every fellow, 60 to 70 percent of fellows each year receive supplemental financial aid covering airfare, lodging, and other costs, more than $27,500 distributed to date, with a goal of extending that support to 100 percent of fellows. Fellowship week combines masterclasses and workshops with a theatergoing program that has brought fellows to Broadway productions including Hell's Kitchen, Suffs, Buena Vista Social Club, and Cats: The Jellicle Ball.

Candela alumni are already building national careers. 'Candela is about building the future of musical theatre by investing in the artists who will shape it,' said Co-Director Dr. Daphnie Sicre. 'Every summer, we create a space where emerging Latine and Caribbean writers can deepen their craft, build lasting relationships, and see that their stories belong on our stages.' This season, Phanésia Pharel made her Off-Broadway debut this season with The Waterfall at WP Theater and developed Dead Girl's Quinceñera at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference ahead of the play's rolling world premiere at Barrington Stage Company, The Goodman Theatre, and Hartford Stage. Fellow alumni, including Demian Chavez, Georgina Escobar, Mark-Eugene Garcia, Jessica Pena, Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, and Khristián Méndez Aguirre, have gone on to world premieres, national awards, and doctorates and teaching appointments at institutions including Princeton University.

The complete 2026 faculty includes: Benjamin Velez, Bess Wohl, Bill Rauch, Candido Tirado, Carmen Rivera, CQ Quintana, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Daphnie Sicre, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Emmanuel Wilson, Ira Weitzman, Jaime Lozano, Jesse Cameron Alick, Joey Contreras, Kristoffer Diaz, Martyna Majok, Patricia McGregor,  Peggy Robles-Alvarado, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Rafael Sánchez, Ralph Sevush, Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Tari Stratton. 

For more information, visit candelafellowship.com. Applications for the 2027 fellowship will open in spring 2027.