For those purposes, I’d define as “within two seasons of the first production, and never before produced in that area.” To pick an example–”In the Next Room” premiered in Berkeley in February of 2009, and was produced on Broadway in November of 2009. If it has its Chicago premiere next season, will it still count as a “new play”? I’d say that it should.

And even if that categorically counts as just a “local premiere,” (and I can see the argument for that), I’d argue that we need to be supporting those just as much.

Usually, the expression “new play” comes with some sort of qualifier: “newest play from whatever hot playwright” or “first full production of this company’s latest work” or “new to Toronto” (aka local premiere).

Instinctively, I think I define “new play” as either “never been seen before” or “written within the past year”. After that, it can be a local premiere, or someone’s latest play.

But when I hear “new play”, I definitely think new written work, not a new production. In any case, I think David has it right in his last paragraph – everything’s new to someone, the main thing is a good story. Spin is easy.

It was new to Indiana residents in 2006, and it was new to D.C. residents in 2009. But it was a substantially different script and so could well have been new to the same Indiana audience.

I like the definition of “a play that has never been produced anywhere else before,” and that’s surely the core of the term. And “local premiere” is an important qualifier. By that, Stoppard’s “The Real Thing” would be a new play in my area. (Sad but true.)

Seems to me we need to rip away some of the qualifiers and ask about scale. Several years ago, “The Drawer Boy” rose up out of nowhere and was The It Play for theatres around the U.S. and Canada. It was a new play to me at the time, and it was promoted as such most every place I saw here in the U.S., but it had a good history in Canada before that.

I see the same thing happening with Itamar Moses’ work, that suddenly it’s pronounced A New Play and everyone can produce “The Four of Us” now. (Which is a shame, because it really needs, oh, I don’t know, an actual story.) Certain playwrights are at this level where the theatre world is paying close attention, awaiting their next “New Play,” while the rest of us go on about our daily lives, writing new plays. It’s a semantic difference, to be sure, but these days, “New Play” is almost a brand for some theatres, a seal of approval if you will. “It’s okay to produce this, ATL did it at Humana, the Goodman’s doing it next month, go right ahead.”

Is there maybe a minimum of actual productions before we can call a play “finished,” and then another minimum number during which it can be considered a “New Play?” I’d say running through the mill at the Humana Festival might do it, but even then, I know a lot of plays that have been heavily revised after the festival. So they’re still not finished.

With our company, I’ve stopped worrying about such distinctions. For our audiences, most everything is new. It’s not an important draw for them. They’re just interested in seeing good stories told well. We try to live up to that.

New – never before produced anywhere
Fresh – previously produced as reading, workshop or heavily rewritten
Local Premier – play from somewhere else that has never been performed here
Rare Revival – play that rarely sees the light of day

As the categories of what a “new play” would be. I think these sum up what people who are interested in “new” are looking for. You could probably add “New Classic”, “Warhorse”, and “Chesnut” to that list and get pretty much everything in theater today.