Hartford Stage’s Melia Bensussen appointed artistic director of National Playwrights Conference

Melia Bensussen is now the artistic director of two major Connecticut theater institutions. On Thursday, she was named the new artistic director of the National Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford. She will also continue to be at Hartford Stage, where she has been the artistic director for the past five years.

Bensussen has already hit the ground running. She was the guest artistic director for the conference this past summer. Bensussen succeeds Wendy C. Goldberg, who ran the conference for 18 years and stepped down in 2022. The O’Neill’s executive director is Tiffani Gavin.

“Last summer I told Tiffani ‘How can I say no?,’” Bensussen told the Courant Thursday during a break in rehearsals at Hartford Stage. “The O’Neill has always been on my dream list of places to work.”

While she knew she was a candidate for having the position long term, she said she hadn’t gotten any clues that she’d be chosen. “I knew it was a big search. I didn’t know any details. It was very formal.”

The O’Neill said the search encompassed 180 applicants and “nearly a dozen semifinalists.”

There is a precedent for an artistic director of the National Playwrights Conference also running a regional theater in Connecticut. Lloyd Richards, who was the first and longest-serving artistic director of the conference from 1968 through 1999, was also the artistic director of the Yale Repertory Theatre from 1979 to 1991.

Hartford Stage readies for premiere of deeply emotional father/daughter drama ‘Simona’s Search’

The National Playwrights Conference is one of the most important theater development programs in the world. Other theater development programs, including Robert Redford’s Sundance Playwrights Lab, have modeled themselves after the O’Neill conference. The main component of the conference is public readings of new plays in progress. The scripts have been worked on at the center by playwrights who’ve been chosen through a rigorous application process or specially invited. They are matched up with directors, actors and others who help get the plays “on their feet.” Participants in the conference stay in small cabins on the grounds of the center along the waterfront in Waterford near the New London border.

Among the playwrights who developed works at the National Playwrights Conference are August Wilson (who worked on most of the plays in his Century Cycle at the O’Neill), Dominique Morisseau, John Patrick Shanley, Jeremy O. Harris, Wendy Wasserstein, Quiara Alegria Hudes, David Henry Hwang, Martyna Majok and Lee Blessing.

“There’s such a synchronicity with the work we do at Hartford Stage,” Bensussen said of her new post. She explained that since Hartford Stage is a “production organization” while the O’Neill is a “development organization,” their missions are not competitive. “It’s very symbiotic.”

She feels that the O’Neill “feeds theaters all over the country. Theaters have less money for play development these days and less opportunities. Now, I have more access.”

She would like to use her new position to “create even more development paths for work there. How can we serve the industry and the playwrights better? How can we use the campus year-round?”

Besides her season as interim artistic director for the National Playwrights Conference last year, Bensussen has directed workshops of new plays there in the past. She has also directed at the O’Neill’s National Music Theater Conference, taught at the O’Neill’s National Theatre Institute and had the consultant role known there as “dream responder.”

Bensussen was named artistic director of Hartford Stage in 2019, but due to the COVID shutdown, the first full season of live shows under her watch wasn’t until the 2021-22 season. She is directing the current production at Hartford Stage, the new drama “Simona’s Search” by Martín Zimmerman.

While comfortable with Shakespeare and other classics (she directed a fine “Winter’s Tale” at Hartford Stage last year and has translated famous Spanish works into English), Bensussen has a long history of developing and directing new plays. “Simon’s Search” is just the latest of several world premieres she’s brought to Hartford Stage. Kate Snodgrass’ “The Art of Burning,” which Hartford Stage produced last year, was a project Bensussen was attached to as a director before the script was even written, and she has been involved in every workshop and production of that play.

Besides Hartford Stage, Bensussen has directed plays at many of the major regional theaters in the country, including the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Huntington Theatre in Boston, La Jolla Playhouse in California, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the new-play Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky and People’s Light and Theatre Company in Pennsylvania.

“I always loved new works,” she said. “The first thing I ever directed in college was a new play, written by another person there, Gloria Parkinson. She said ‘You’re good at this. You should do more new plays.’

“What’s great for Hartford Stage is that I’ll be reading more new plays.”