Dominic Orlando Playwriting Award Receives Support From Venturous Theater Fund

The Dominic Orlando Fund, established in 2022 in memory of playwright Dominic Orlando, who passed away in 2021, announces that the 2025-26 cycle of the Dominic Orlando Playwriting Award will receive financial support from Venturous Theatre Fund, a donor-advised fund at the Tides Foundation. Venturous Theatre Fund supports bold, ambitious new work for the stage, as well as artist-driven initiatives that embrace agency for playwrights at all stages of their careers and that champion creative growth and financial security for dramatists.

With the support of the Venturous Theatre Fund, the administrators of the Dominic Orlando Playwriting Award will now offer stipends to volunteer readers. Additionally, the award amount for the winning playwright will be raised to $12,000. Venturous will also provide resources to assist the advisory board in developing a long-term strategy to ensure the sustainability and continued success of the Dominic Orlando Playwriting Award for years to come.

During the 2025-26 cycle, the Dominic Orlando Award will transition to an open call for submissions. Playwrights who believe their work meets the mission of the Fund will have the opportunity to apply with a letter of recommendation from a theatre. Interested playwrights should click here after September 15 for application information.

The unrestricted Award was created in honor of Orlando's creative spirit and "unconventional career" to recognize playwrights who have forged their own paths by producing their own work, running their own independent companies, and/or artists who have taken artistic risks without finding significant financial or material support from large institutional theaters or philanthropic organizations. The Award is particularly targeted toward writers who, like Orlando, have made a continued commitment to smaller-budget theater companies and ensembles and helped them push the boundaries of what theater and playwriting can be.

The past recipients of the award were José Casas and Christian St. Croix. A third recipient of the award will be announced in June 2025.

Dominic Orlando began his career in theater, co-running the No-Pants Theatre Company, a small independent company in New York where he wrote, directed, and produced many of his plays. In 2003, he moved to Minneapolis on a Playwrights' Center Jerome Fellowship, where he then stayed for many years, creating work with myriad local theaters, including the company he co-founded, the Workhaus Collective. In 2015, he moved to Los Angeles and began a successful career writing for television, working on numerous series, including "Them," "The OA," "Mindhunter," "Outer Range" and "Nightflyers." Orlando died on November 17, 2021.

The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, an organization that Dominic had a longtime association with, acts as a fiscal sponsor and works in collaboration with the advisory board to administer the award.

Information about Venturous Theater Fund may be found here.

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