Playwright in Residence - Heller Theatre Company

Heller Theatre Company is searching for our next Playwright in Residence!

Heller Theatre Company is Tulsa’s home for new works. We are the only local theatre 100% dedicated to original plays by regional playwrights.

The Playwright in Residence will join the company on May 1, 2025, spend May and June observing and learning from our current Playwright in Residence, Bailey James, and assume all responsibilities of the position on July 1, 2025 when Bailey steps down.

Requirements:

Candidates must live in Tulsa or the surrounding area.
The chosen Playwright in Residence will sign a two-year contract with Heller Theatre Company specifying responsibilities Heller has to the playwright and that the playwright has to Heller.

Compensation:

The chosen Playwright in Residence will receive a stipend of $1,000 per year to develop their craft.
They will receive a royalty of $50 per performance for full-length plays, and $30 per performance for shorter pieces.

Responsibilities include:

Writing a full-length or one-act play during each of the residency years. In the past, these have been fully produced as part of our main season.

Teaching public workshops on the art and craft of playwriting.
Attending Board of Director and Artistic Board meetings.
Participating in PLOT - Playwright’s Lab of Tulsa.

Optional responsibilities include:

Serving on play selection committees.
Co-producing Second Sunday Serials.
Other involvement with Heller’s season as desired - marketing, producing, crewing, dramaturgy, etc. shows beyond the playwright’s own work.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Submission Deadline: March 31, 2025, 11:59pm

Please submit application materials to hellertheatre@gmail.com and put PLAYWRIGHT IN RESIDENCE in the subject line.

MATERIALS REQUESTED

Resumé - Your past playwriting experiences and other theatre involvement or related skillsets.
Cover Letter - An introduction to you, any relationship to Heller, and context on your submitted writing samples.
Artistic Approach Statement - Your artistic interests and priorities as a playwright.
Statement of Intent - What you hope to gain or accomplish during this residency and how you can provide benefit to Heller as the Playwright in Residence.
Play Submissions - At least two samples of plays you have written in the past 4 years.
References - Contact info for three references familiar with you, your work, and/or your process.

Roles of the Playwright in Residence

CREATE

Serve Heller’s Mission statement: Heller Theatre Company develops and presents original works of social relevance to Northeast Oklahoma.
Write a new full-length play and/or one-act play each year, especially with a view toward exploring a range of stories, styles/genres, and thematic elements.
Interact with Heller participants (including design, technical, actors, directors, and dramaturgs) on their new work, with open rehearsals and/ or workshops, sharing process aspects of rewriting and refining work.
Participate actively in PLOT, presenting new work on a frequent basis, offering prompts for other writers, and sharing observations on craft.

TEACH

Conduct public workshops on the art and craft of playwriting for Heller.
Recruit potential playwrights and those interested in the development of new work via encounters within the theatre community.

SHARE

Coordinate with the Heller Artistic Board on projects.
Participate in the planning of other events as part of Heller’s season.
Attend productions by other theatre group with an eye toward sharing views on what is state-of-the-art in Tulsa and nearby localities, especially with regard to theatres doing new work.
Read and evaluate submitted plays for possible Heller production.
Share resources such as key works on playwriting, play development and recommend plays for reading.
Seek out and share online resources such as National New Play Network, New Play Exchange, Original Works Publishing, and others.
Be a resource: encourage writers to submit their work beyond Tulsa/ Oklahoma.

INNOVATE

Assist in the development of new approaches to play development processes.
Bring new ideas to styles of production for new work, including alternative spaces.

PREFERRED

Be a Dramatists Guild member and help promote Guild membership and opportunities.
Someone who can be physically present for Second Sunday Serials each month and other events as needed.

bailey james

playwright in residence

2023-2025

Bailey James

BIO

Bailey James is a Tulsa playwright who got her start with Heller Theatre and is delighted to be the company’s newest Playwright In Residence. She has produced several plays locally, including Reflections (co-written with Obum Ukabum), Exploits with Blackjack Rewrite Company, and One Year In Silence and Resilience with Theatre Tulsa. Her plays Future Projections and A Fine Cow Indeed were produced through Second Sunday Serials, and she won the audience choice award for Heller’s 25-Hour Play Festival in 2022. She has also written short stories, food blog posts, video game reviews, and more, and currently works as a marketing writer for a software company. She studied Creative Writing, English, and History at Oberlin College.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I write plays to understand other people. All the skills I apply to my craft - a talent for language and character development, a background in historical research, and a love of collaborating with performers, directors, and technicians to bring a work to the stage are in service of helping us all better make sense of the world we live in and the rich, complicated perspectives of the people around us.

My personal plays are focused on the intimate, confusing, inexplicable bonds we make when we dare to know each other. My work tends toward small casts, with roles that give actors plenty of opportunities to explore nuances of character and the uncertain development of relationships. I love to explore language and how we use it in our lives - the things we attempt to express so ineloquently, the ways we avoid saying what we really mean, how we weaponize jargon to solidify our authority, and what our bodies communicate that our words can never hope to match. In Future Projections, I used a relationship between two people who were in constant negotiation about how to label their connection to explore how we seek to use definitions to understand what we mean to each other. In Exploits, I let the physical distance between two characters serve as a roadblock that forced them to use their words to bridge the thousands of miles and different life experiences that separated them. In Bleeding Edge, I used the setting of a dystopian office environment to explore how power and corporate lingo are inextricably connected and used to keep more vulnerable people in control. Each of my solo projects has explored themes I care about like dating, the workplace, art, and technology with characters that speak to our messy humanity.

One of my greatest passions as a playwright has been to collaborate - to use my abilities to share the stories of other people and other times. In my work on Reflections with Obum Ukabam, I applied my skills in deep historical research and in building rich, conflicted characters to help tell the story of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre to the Tulsa community during a time when they were seeking to understand our city’s past and how we can grow from our worst actions. In both of my short pieces for Theatre Tulsa’s Tell Me A Story project, I aimed to use the tools of theatre to adapt true events from the lives of Tulsans Karin Roest and Shadia Dahlal into dramatic works that conveyed the emotional truth of these women’s pasts in a way that would engage and illuminate audiences. These types of collaborative projects will always be a priority for me because they help to elevate voices and narratives that deserve greater visibility in our community, and because they are a way for me to better understand new perspectives myself - which makes me a more empathetic person and a more informed artist.

I am honored to have been able to share my own ideas onstage, as well as trusted with perspectives and experiences that are vastly different from my own. Whether I am working alone or alongside other artists to share a story that requires the skills of a playwright, I apply every bit of my ability to bring people together for an intimate contract that is painfully temporary, happening right in front of you, hopefully touching something deeply human that cannot be experienced any other way.