Freelance dramaturg based in Philadelphia, Heather Helinsky is a dramaturg that playwrights have recognized as “especially adept at freeing energies in unexpected ways. She encourages discovery.” As a Literary Manager, she's known for her unique community-centered anti-bias script reading practices, creating abundance over scarcity mindset, and care work for the playwrights who applied.
Literary Management: Playwrights Foundation (2019-2024), Jewish Plays Project (2020-current).
Nationally, her dramaturgical work has been seen at the Accessible Theatre in Boston, American Repertory Theatre, the Apothetae, Arizona Repertory Theatre, the Athena Project, Borderlands Theatre Company, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Great Plains Theatre Conference, The Kennedy Center, The Lark, Miracle...
Freelance dramaturg based in Philadelphia, Heather Helinsky is a dramaturg that playwrights have recognized as “especially adept at freeing energies in unexpected ways. She encourages discovery.” As a Literary Manager, she's known for her unique community-centered anti-bias script reading practices, creating abundance over scarcity mindset, and care work for the playwrights who applied.
Literary Management: Playwrights Foundation (2019-2024), Jewish Plays Project (2020-current).
Nationally, her dramaturgical work has been seen at the Accessible Theatre in Boston, American Repertory Theatre, the Apothetae, Arizona Repertory Theatre, the Athena Project, Borderlands Theatre Company, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Great Plains Theatre Conference, The Kennedy Center, The Lark, Miracle Theatre in Portland, Moscow Art Theatre’s American Studio, Omaha Community Playhouse, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Philadelphia Theatre Company, Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, Plan-B Theatre in Salt Lake City, Plays and Players of Philadelphia, Power Street Theatre, Telluride Playwrights Festival, Venus Theatre Company, and Woolly Mammoth. Notable production dramaturgy includes JT Rogers’ Oslo at PlayPenn, Tira Palmquist’s climate change play Two Degrees at DCPA, Caridad Svich’s NNPN rolling world premiere of Guapa, and director Robert Woodruff’s Britannicus at A.R.T.
In addition to her Literary Manager work at for four seasons at Playwrights Foundation, she dramaturged Stefani Kuo's Final Boarding Call in 2020 and Bay Area writer Elana Dykewomon's final creative work, How to Let Your Lover Die in August 2022. She is a long-time script reader for The O’Neill, PlayPenn, GPTC, Jewish Plays Project, NNPN, Seven Devils, Sundance Theatre Lab, Playwrights Realm and ACTF National Playwriting awards; reading approx. 250-300 new scripts per season. As a freelance dramaturg, she works consistently with a wide-range of writers and aesthetics, and will travel to support them through readings and workshops.
She moves fluidly between classical dramaturgy and new play development; she has been the Literary Manager of the Pittsburgh Public (2008-2009) and PICT Classic Theatre (2012-2013), published articles for PA Shakespeare Festival's "The Quill" until 2020. She's been an advocate for plays by women+/LGBTQIA+. For example, in season 2017-2018 with primarily female artistic teams at the Denver Center, Venus Theatre, James Madison University, Lee University, and 6NewPlays in San Francisco.
Recent work in 2025: Jen Maisel's Provenance reading at JPP's festival of new plays at Berkshire Theatre Group directed by Carey Perloff, The Machu Picchu play by Tyler Rocio Ecoña directed by Erlina Ortiz at Power Street Theatre, and a research residency & development workshop through Yale's Binger Center for lead artist Ty Defoe and director Santi Iacinti for a trilogy of indigiqueer transfuturist plays, capping with a fall NYC workshop of TW2: Madoodiswan.
As an educator, she’s a teaching artist for the American College Theatre Festival (formerly KCACTF), mentoring emerging dramaturgs at KCACTF since '12 in regions 1,3,4,5,6,7.8 and has been involved with the student dramaturgs at KCACTF Nationals. In 2026, she initiated the ACTF/LMDA Mentor Match program with ACTF Dramaturgy Coordinator Diane Brewer, matching 34 ACTF student dramaturgs with LMDA members. She's worked directly with producer Gregg Henry to interview student playwrights for the Kennedy Center's Undergraduate Playwrights' Workshop since its inception in 2016. Other Kennedy Center related projects include working with the VSA high school playwrights and dramaturging Andrew Heinrich's play THE FLOOD at NNPN's MFA Workshop at the Kennedy Center in summer 2017.
She has been a Visiting Professor of Dramaturgy at the University of Arizona (‘07/08), Carnegie Mellon School of Drama (‘12/’13), and an adjunct at Brooklyn College '15 and Lesley University '15-16, guest artist for Yale's 1st & 2nd year dramaturgs in Spring 2019, guest artist for the Iowa Playwrights Workshop in 2025.
Her M.F.A. in Dramaturgy and Theatre Studies is from the American Repertory Theatre/Moscow Art Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard. O'Neill's Critics Institute in 2016. Member of LMDA since 2006, Executive Committee as VP of Freelance for LMDA 2018-2022, VP of Membership from 2022-2026. Co-founder of LMDA's Dramaturging the Phoenix with Ken Cerniglia and Anne Morgan, which held space for LMDA's members 2020-2022.
Panels: TCG Chicago 2024, Dramatists Guild Virtual workshop on Ageism, led by Todd London. ATHE Montreal 2015 Pre-Conference with playwright Patrick Leroux from Concordia University.
Other service: Theatre Philadelphia's Barrymore Awards from 2017-2019, where she served as a Judge on a committee of 12 Philadelphia Theatre artists, which included anti-bias training while reviewing 80-100 productions per season, and at the end of covering all plays in a 30-mile radius of the Billy Penn statue (PA, NJ, DE) for 2+ years, they gave us a $100 stipend for gas. My Saturn Ion died for good at the last Philly play I reviewed, which felt appropriate.