Helena Pennington is a new play dramaturg and literary manager based in New York City. Her work gravitates towards the intersection of theater and other live performance styles, including music theater, puppet arts, and immersive or environmental theater. She is currently the literary manager of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, an institution dedicated to nurturing new work for the stage and the people who make it. There, Helena shepherds the script submission and selection process for the National Playwrights Conference and National Music Theater Conference. She is also the resident dramaturg of the O’Neill’s National Puppetry Conference. She is a former member of the artistic development staff at Manhattan Theatre Club, which produces new work on Broadway and off-Broadway. Helena’s literary and dramaturgical work has been seen at Playwrights Horizons, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and National Music Theater Conference, HERE Arts Center, and more.
As a script reader, Helena has advocated for new plays and musicals at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and National Music Theater Conference, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the National Network of New Plays, and myriad other institutions devoted to adventurous contemporary theater.
Helena has served on educational panels and designed professional development workshops for early-career writers through for the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF), the National Theater Institute, the National Music Theater Institute, and the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas — of which she is a proud member.