Alainna Welty of Coatesville, Pa., will spend the fall 2023 semester at the National Theater Institute, in Waterford, Connecticut. The immersive residency is a seven-days-a-week program, during which students work with master teachers to create theater.

Known as the launchpad of American theater, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center is home to the National Theater Institute and dedicated to nurturing new work and new artists. Originating the process of developing new plays through script-in-hand staged readings, scores of projects developed at the O’Neill have gone on to full production at other theaters around the world including Broadway, off-Broadway, London’s West End, and major regional theaters. Artists who began their careers at the O’Neill include Meryl Streep, Jennifer Garner and Michael Douglas.

A graduate of Coatesville Area Senior High School, Welty is an Albright senior who sparked her interests by co-majoring in theatre and arts administration at Albright. The college’s national award-winning theatre program and Domino Players theatre company have been invited to perform at Kennedy festival 11 times in the last 15 years.