Paulette Haupt, founding artistic director of the National Music Theater Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, will step down following the 2017 season, after 40 years leading the program. The program began in 1978 after George C. White, founder of the O'Neill, invited Haupt to launch a new development program for music theater in a similar mold to the O'Neill's groundbreaking National Playwrights Conference, which began in 1964.

The O'Neill will launch a national search for the next artistic director of the National Music Theater Conference — one of the O'Neill's six artistic directors — in the coming weeks.

Under Haupt's guidance, NMTC distinguished itself as a leader in the field and was among the first new music theater development labs in the nation. Through NMTC, the O'Neill was the first professional theater company to support Lin-Manuel Miranda, with his and Quiara Alegría Hudes' "In the Heights" (NMTC '05, Tony Award '08). Among the works developed at the conference over the years are Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx, and Jeff Whitty's "Avenue Q" (NMTC '02, Tony Award '04); and "In Transit" (NMTC '08) co-written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Sara Wordsworth, James-Allen Ford and Russell Kaplan. "In Transit" will open on Broadway at the Circle in the Square in December.

Haupt said, in a press release from the O'Neill, "My decision to leave the O'Neill was difficult to say the least. But I think that a change of leadership for the Conference will be exciting and timely. My years of experience at the O'Neill has given me great artistic joy, and I look forward to a move to different surroundings where I will be freshly challenged to continue making an imprint in the field of new music theater. And I look forward to expanding my New York company Premieres and our very successful 'Inner Voices' series beyond what it is now."

"Paulette's impact on the American musical is immense," said O'Neill Executive Director Preston Whiteway. "Through her leadership of the National Music Theater Conference, over 180 new music theater works have been launched and hundreds of new writers and composers have been nurtured and given the opportunity to develop their unique voice. Many of these writing teams continue to push the music theater form forward, and the O'Neill and the American theater community owe Paulette a great debt for ensuring these voices are heard."