The Old Globe announced it has received a $2 million gift from longtime Globe supporters and philanthropists Paula and Brian Powers to create the Powers New Works Fund. The transformative gift was made to support new play development at The Old Globe and is in addition to the couple’s previous contributions supporting the organization’s general operating fund and annual Powers New Voices Festival. The Powers New Works Fund is intended to be spent over 10 years, enabling the Globe to build on its already significant new play development programs, cementing the Globe’s reputation as a national leader in the creation and presentation of new works by American playwrights.

The Old Globe will use the funds to advance the theatre’s new work programs and activities, including the continuation of the annual Powers New Voices Festival, commissions of playwrights, developmental readings and workshops of new works, production of digital works, residencies at the Globe for playwrights, and the staffing and administration of the newly created Department of New Plays and Dramaturgy.

As part of the expansion made possible by the Powers New Works Fund, Danielle Mages Amato will serve as the newly created department’s Director of New Plays and Dramaturgy and will be instrumental in the development of new works and playwrights for the American theatre. She will also join the senior leadership team at the Globe. Amato holds an M.F.A. in Dramaturgy and a Ph.D. in Drama and Theatre from UC San Diego. She joined the staff of The Old Globe in 2011. Before that, the spent four years as the dramaturg and literary manager of Studio Theatre in Washington, DC. She is a past president of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and has served on their board of directors. Amato has worked as a freelance dramaturg, theatre critic, and university professor. Since 2020, she has taught theatre history, modern drama, and solo performance at University of San Diego and UC San Diego. At the Globe, Amato has overseen eight years of the Powers New Voices Festival and has dramaturged world premieres of plays by Anna Ziegler, JC Lee, Matthew Lopez, Itamar Moses, and others. She is also a published novelist; her debut, The Hidden Memory of Objects,was released by Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins.

The Old Globe will present the eighth annual Powers New Voices Festival, supported by Paula and Brian Powers. The festival features readings of new American plays by some of the most exciting playwrights writing for the American theatre today. The free festival returns live and in person April 6–10, 2022 (originally scheduled for January 14–16, 2022) in the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, part of the Globe’s Conrad Prebys Theatre Center.

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