Audible Creates $5 Million Fund for Emerging Playwrights -<br />By JOSHUA BARONEMAY 30, 2017<br />Audible, the digital audiobook giant, announced Tuesday<br />that it would create a $5 million fund to commission new works from emerging playwrights — not for the stage, but for people’s headphones and speakers.<br />Butterfly”); the directors Trip Cullman (“Six Degrees of Separation”)<br />and Leigh Silverman (“Violet”); and two artistic directors of Off Broadway companies, Oskar Eustis of the Public Theater, and Mimi O’Donnell of Labyrinth Theater Company.<br />Grant recipients will be recommended by an advisory board made up of theater industry insiders: the actress Annette Bening (“20th Century<br />Women”); the award-winning playwrights Lynn Nottage (“Sweat”), Tom Stoppard (“The Coast of Utopia”) and David Henry Hwang (“M.<br />Mr. Katz said he hoped that Audible’s format would help widen the reach of emerging playwrights,<br />who might otherwise be writing for Off (or even Off Off) Broadway theaters.<br />Playwrights can apply for grants to cover both “industry standards” for new commissions<br />and the cost of production, said Donald R. Katz, Audible’s chief executive and a former journalist and author.
