Kate Hamill (18 productions)
Rajiv Joseph (18)
Jeffrey Hatcher (16)
James Ijames (16)
Heidi Schreck (16)
Eboni Booth (13)
Rick Elice (13, 11 co-writes)
Lauren Gunderson (13, 4 co-writes)
Frederick Knott (13)
August Wilson (13, 2 co-writes)
Lloyd Suh (12)
Marshall Brickman (11)
Selina Fillinger (11)
Samuel D. Hunter (11)
Ken Ludwig (11)
Jessie Nelson (11)
Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, Henry Shields (9)
Thomas Meehan (9)
Lynn Nottage (9)
Howard Ashman (8)
Jocelyn Bioh (8)
Patrick Barlow (8)
Steven Dietz (8, 2 co-writes)
*23 due to ties.
This list was culled from 1,281 productions at 305 TCG member theatres, plus 176 productions at commercial or non-member theatres, excluding plays by Shakespeare (who this season will have a total of 46 productions). To read more about this list and to compare it with previous years, go to americantheatre.org/tag/top-20-most-produced-playwrights.
Our annual list of most-produced playwrights usually overlaps heavily with the year’s Top 10 most-produced plays list, and this year is no exception: All the authors represented on this year’s Top 10 Plays list are here. At the very top of this year’s playwrights’ list, though, is a prolific dramatist who’s represented by so many different plays at theatres nationwide that no single title makes the Top 10: Kate Hamill, whose Jane Austen adaptations have made the Top 10 plays list before, whose plays in the coming season also include the popular Ms. Holmes and Ms. Watson, Apt 2B, Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really, and a new play about Artemisia Gentileschi, The Light and the Dark, at Primary Stages in November.
Hamill is tied for the top spot with the similarly prolific Rajiv Joseph, who in addition to his Top 10 play King James has productions of The Lake Effect and Guards at the Taj, as well as a new thriller, Dakar 2000, going up at Manhattan Theatre Club in Winter 2025.
Another perennial name on these lists, Lauren Gunderson, also made her name partly with Jane Austen spinoffs—i.e., her popular Miss Bennet’s Christmas series with Margot Melcon—and historical dramas, none of which made the Top 10 list because, also like Hamill, she’s got a lot of titles out there. The same can be said of the frequently produced Ken Ludwig, who has made a cottage industry of Sherlock spinoffs (Baskerville, The Game‘s Afoot) in addition to his Lend Me a Tenor franchise and others. The same could be said of Patrick Barlow and Steven Dietz. We’re also always happy to see musical book writers show up here: not only Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman and Jessie Nelson (for Jersey Boys and Waitress, respectively) but also two late greats: Howard Ashman, whose Little Shop of Horrors is remarkably popular again this season, and Thomas Meehan, whose list of musical books represented around the U.S. in the coming season includes Annie, Hairspray, Elf, and Young Frankenstein.
For a look at this year’s Top 10 list, go here.
