Eugene O'Neill Theater Center to Launch National Music Theater Institute in Fall 2014

According to the Hartford Courant, the State of Connecticut has just approved a $3 million grant to the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center to create a new National Music Theater Institute. The program will launch in Fall 2014 and will include 'seven new dormitory cottages creating living spaces for 65people, a laundry building, a new rehearsal hall and conversion of an existing structure into a production facility.'

Executive Director Preston Whiteway told HC: "This is a transformative moment for us. This is a positive for the center's long-term financial health."

He continued: "In the age of 'Glee' and 'Smash' and where 80 percent Broadway shows are musicals, this is an untapped market. This new program reinvigorates the O'Neill and will benefit the American theater for years to come."

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Founded in 1964 by George C. White and named in honor of America's only Nobel Prize-winning playwright, the O'Neill is home to many distinct programs, including the National Playwrights Conference, National Music Theater Conference, National Puppetry Conference, Cabaret & Performance Conference, National Theater Institute, National Critics Institute and the Monte Cristo Cottage, O'Neill's childhood home located in neighboring New London. At the O'Neill, writers and directors, puppeteers and singers, students and audiences alike take their first steps in exploring, revising and understanding their work and the potential of the theater they help create.

The O'Neill's work focuses on the script as it begins its journey to the stage. The actors work with minimal props and no sets or costumes, holding scripts in their hands, revealing for the first time the magic of a new play or musical, puppetry piece or cabaret act. Work first performed at the O'Neill has gone on to regional theaters, Broadway, film, and television. Students and professionals who have honed their skills at the O'Neill can be seen in these venues every day across the nation and world. Others work behind the scenes as playwrights, directors, in stage management, publicity and a hundred other roles that the public never sees but are nonetheless essential to every production.