The Top 20 Most-Produced Playwrights of the 2019-20 Season
Lauren Yee, playwright
The Top 20* Most-Produced Playwrights of the 2019-20 Season
Lauren Gunderson 33
(including 12 co-writing credits)Lauren Yee 18
Lucas Hnath 17
Tennessee Williams 17
August Wilson 15
Karen Zacarías 15
(including 3 co-writing credits)Ken Ludwig 15
(including 1 co-writing credit)Joshua Harmon 13
(including 1 co-writing credit)Neil Simon 13
Simon Stephens 13
Margot Melcon 12
(including 12 co-writing credits with Lauren Gunderson)Lynn Nottage 12
(including 1 co-writing credit)Duncan Macmillan 11
(including 10 co-writing credits)Kate Hamill 11
Quiara Alegría Hudes 11
(including 7 co-writing credits)Paula Vogel 10
Sarah Ruhl 10
Lucy Kirkwood 9
Steve Martin 9
Steven Dietz 9
Methodology
Each year we collect season programming information from Theatre Communications Group’s member theatres; from those listings, which totaled 2,229 entries at 385 theatres playing Sept 1, 2019, to Aug. 31, 2020, we set aside all Shakespeare productions. We also removed any productions with fewer than two weeks of performances.
Footnotes
Shakespeare has 79 productions this season (including adaptations), making him, as ever, the actual most-produced playwright in the United States. But since he’s dead, we’re figuring he won’t mind us not including him.
It’s a good year for Laurens: Lauren Yee makes her debut not only on our Top 20 but on our Top 10 list with not one but two titles: The Great Leap and Cambodian Rock Band.
We don’t include composers on this list, but if we did, Alan Menken would be up there. He is the most-produced composer this season with 19 productions, most of them from musicals he wrote with Disney. Theatre snobs and princess skeptics may scoff, but the Mouse’s dominion over entertainment may reach into theatre.
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