Terrence McNally New Works Incubator Reveals Fellowship Winners for Fourth Cycle
Each McNally Fellow will receive a one-time stipend of $10,000 to be used as the playwright sees fit to best further their goals.
The winners have been revealed for Cycle 4 of the Terrence McNally New Works Incubator: 2026 fellows Katie Bender, Orlando Hernández, and Beth Hyland. The finalists for the 2026 fellowship included Borna Barzin, Benjamin Benne, Regan Moro, Abigail C. Onwunali, and Caitlin Saylor Stephens.
As a continuation of Terrence McNally’s singular legacy of mentorship, and his commitment to fostering bold new voices in the American theater, the New Works Incubator is a multi-pronged program designed to support ambitious early-career playwrights by giving them time and space to develop their work, professional mentorship with veteran playwrights, and access to the community of artists and work being developed at Rattlestick and Tom Kirdahy Productions.
Since 2023, fellowships have been awarded to Avery Deutsch, Celeste Jennings, Eliana Theologides Rodriguez, Haygen-Brice Walker, HyoJeong Choi, Jesse Jae Hoon, Milo Cramer, Molly Herron Bicks, and Sam Mueller.
As part of the growing commitment to connect the fellows with world-class artistic collaborators, each McNally Fellow will also receive a developmental workshop that culminates in a public reading featuring industry-leading professionals. Recent mentors have included Jaclyn Bachaus, Hannah Bos, Sheila Callaghan, Sarah DeLappe, Halley Feiffer, Emma Horwitz, David Henry Hwang, MJ Kaufman,
Paul Thureen, and Mfoniso Udofia. Recent directors have included Tea Alagić, Arin Arbus, Carson Joenk, Anne Kauffman, Portia Krieger, Goldie E. Patrick, Caitlin Sullivan, and Dustin Wills.
Milo Cramer, a 2025 Terrence McNally Fellow, said of the program, "The Terrence McNally Incubator was one of the most wonderful artistic and professional experiences of my life. It provided substantial financial support, which allowed me to devote myself to writing with otherwise impossible seriousness and professionalism.”
The Cycle 4 Fellows were selected by a Playwrights Advisory Council from a competitive pool of over 500 applicants by our esteemed 2026 Playwrights Advisory Council which featured Eboni Booth, Sheila Callaghan, Sarah Ruhl, and Chay Yew.
It was announced this spring that the Rattlestick Theater building (224 Waverly Place) will be renamed The Terrence McNally Theater after the late Tony Award-winning playwright as a celebration of the continued partnership between the Terrence McNally Foundation and Rattlestick, which has been the home of the Terrence McNally New Works Incubator since 2023.
STRUCTURE OF THE INCUBATOR PROGRAM
STIPEND
Each McNally Fellow will receive a one-time stipend of $10,000 to be used as the playwright sees fit to best further their goals.
MENTORSHIP
In consultation with Rattlestick Theater and Tom Kirdahy Productions (TKP), each McNally Fellow will be paired with a veteran playwright mentor who will read a minimum of two drafts and offer one-on-one feedback, in addition to attending a workshop rehearsal and/or final presentation subject to their availability.
THREE-WEEK INCUBATION
After the initial mentor meeting, the playwright will revise and develop their play for three weeks. This is time for rigorous thinking, dreaming, and writing outside the constraints of a product-oriented rehearsal space. In addition to mentor feedback, the playwright will meet with the literary teams at both TKP and Rattlestick to discuss their work and process. McNally fellows will be invited to participate in a series of Rattlestick events where they will have the opportunity to get to know the teams at TKP and Rattlestick as well as the other McNally Fellows and other industry professionals.
WORKSHOP
The second part of the incubator will take the form of a developmental workshop culminating in a public presentation. Core collaborators (director, dramaturg, actors) will be chosen in consultation with the selected playwright, TKP, and Rattlestick and will be compensated for their time.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Katie Bender is a playwright, performer, and theater maker. Her solo show, Instructions for a Séance, has been produced at The Alley All New Festival, Amphibian Stage, Oklahoma City Rep Theater, Fusebox Festival, and will be at Milwaukee Rep in the fall of 2026. Other plays include The Optimizers, which was part of the Playwrights’ Center public season in 2025, and Judith, which premiered at Urbanite Theater in 2024. She was a Jerome Fellow and a Core Writer at the Playwrights’ Center. She received her MFA in playwriting from the University of Texas at Austin.
Beth Hyland’s plays and musicals include Sylvia Sylvia Sylvia (Geffen Playhouse, Williamstown Theatre Festival), Fires, Ohio (Alliance Theatre, Goodman New Stages), Baby Shower Katie (Primary Stages Liff Lab, Round House Theatre), Seagulls (Wilbury Theatre, Oak Park Festival Theatre, Octagon Theatre), Cancelina, and Anna K. She received a 2026 Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, the 2025 Alliance/Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award, and the 2024 Weissberger Prize. She holds commissions with MTC/Sloan, Geffen Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, Steppenwolf Theatre, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. MFA: UC San Diego. Representation: Jamie Kaye-Phillips, Paradigm; Benjamin Blake and Anthony Ippolito, Heroes and Villains Entertainment. bethhyland.com
Orlando Hernández is a playwright, tap dancer, and actor based in NYC. He helped to develop Teatro en el Verano, a bilingual theater collaboration between Trinity Repertory Company and Rhode Island Latino Arts in Providence, RI, and his play La Broa' (Broad Street) premiered in January 2024 on Trinity Rep's main stage. Orlando has presented his dance-theater work at New York Live Arts, On the Boards, Joe’s Pub, and Jacob’s Pillow, and he is a 2025-2028 Jerome Fellow in Dance. He lives in Washington Heights.
