Playwright Rachel Wagstaff was on the verge of giving up theater.

She and fellow writer Duncan Abel developed a play based on the bestselling novel “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown. The COVID-19 pandemic forced them to shorten the work, and when they finally opened in London’s West End in 2022, the omicron COVID variant came onto the scene too.

“I was feeling very low about it all and even considering writing for television, of all things,” said Wagstaff, who is based in London.

Then came Ogunquit Playhouse.

A continent away, the theater wanted to continue to develop the play and stage it in Maine. Wagstaff and Abel traveled to New York and then to Maine to tweak and rehearse. A refreshed version of the “The Da Vinci Code” got its American premiere at Ogunquit in 2023, and Wagstaff got new energy.

“I think this saved everything,” Wagstaff said. “I fell in love with theater again. I saw a gorgeous production. I saw incredible audience reaction. I saw the play getting the life it should have had, the responses it should have had .”

Ogunquit Playhouse is now spending more than $100,000 every year to develop new works and this summer launched a special fund for that purpose. It is a small but growing percentage of the seasonal theater’s annual $15 million budget. As a result, Ogunquit is gaining a reputation as a place where shows can get their start.

“The Da Vinci Code” will play next year in Illinois. “Mystic Pizza,” which debuted in 2021 , will go on national tour in 2025. The version of “The Nutty Professor” that played at Ogunquit in 2022 is being released as an album later this year. Going into the final week of its premiere run, a musical based on “My Best Friend’s Wedding” is now the highest-grossing new work in the theater’s history, a spokesperson for the playhouse said.

Betsy King Militello, executive director of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, said the financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have prompted some theaters to spend less on readings and workshops. In contrast, Ogunquit Playhouse has invested more.

“Ogunquit has continued on their path to become a major player in new-work development,” King Militello said.

Ogunquit is the largest, but theaters across Maine develop and premiere works at different levels.

Another major hub for new works is Portland Stage, which hosts an annual festival and a biennial playwriting competition dedicated to this purpose. At the Little Festival of the Unexpected, Portland Stage gives workshops to two to four new plays each year. Some – such as “Almost, Maine” by John Cariani, “Papermaker” by Monica Wood and “Sweet Goats and Blueberry Señoritas” by Richard Blanco and Vanessa Garcia – later have debuted to great commercial success at Portland Stage. Others find life in other theaters.

“We think it’s worth cultivating the voices of different playwrights,” literary manager Todd Backus said.

At Ogunquit Playhouse, artistic director Brad Kinney feels the same. This month, he will attend the Festival of New Works hosted by the National Alliance for Musical Theatre in New York. The event features 45-minute productions of eight scripts for an industry-only audience. The goal is to further the development of those shows and also to add to the musical theater repertoire. Kinney said his years of attending that festival stoked his desire to develop and produce new works in Ogunquit.

“You start to think, ‘From my own institution, how can we help the industry? How can we help writers or artists who are new or have a new story? How can we help them move their art along?’ ” Kinney said.

Peer research conducted by the Ogunquit Playhouse shows that many regional theaters do this kind of work to varying degrees. Their survey, compiled in March, found fellowships and festivals for new works at other venues, including Goodspeed Musicals in Connecticut, La Jolla Playhouse in California and the Denver Center of Performing Arts Theatre Company in Colorado. The program at Ogunquit is younger and not yet so robust as some, but it is growing.

And every work is different. Sometimes, the playhouse starts the process by reaching out to a movie studio or rightsholder to inquire about a stage adaptation. In that scenario, the team at Ogunquit might then find the writers and the directors to start from scratch. In other cases, the piece is already in development and needs help getting to the next step. For example, a commercial producer had already acquired the rights to “Mystic Pizza” and found a writer for the book by the time Ogunquit got involved.

The first work to come to the stage that had been developed in part at Ogunquit was “Heartbreak Hotel” in 2017. To date, seven shows have gone from development to the main stage. Kinney said the playhouse started by setting aside $5,000 here or $20,000 there in the budget a few years ago. That money spends fast. The process begins with script readings, which can cost between $3,000 (on Zoom) and $20,000 (in person in New York). Then, a piece could move into a full-scale developmental workshop, which can add up to more than $100,000. Actors read the script and sing the songs, and the show starts to take shape.

Sometimes, Ogunquit will be involved in developing a work that doesn’t debut there; Kinney said the playhouse supported readings of “Christmas in Connecticut” before it premiered at Goodspeed Musicals in its titular state in 2022. If it is chosen for the main stage at Ogunquit, it needs designs for sets and costumes and lights. The writers will likely attend rehearsals and previews to keep making tweaks, which might not happen for a more established work. Kinney estimated that a typical show costs $1.7 million to produce, and a new work costs about 20% more.

So the allocation in the budget for new works development has increased over time. In July, the playhouse officially launched the New Works Fund. So far, 25 people have contributed gifts ranging from $250 to $5,000. The goal is to raise $50,000 in 2025.

Also key to the equation are the people who buy a package of tickets for a whole season. The playhouse has between 3,700 and 4,000 subscribers, which make up about 11% of its total audience. A premiere is also usually slotted at the end of the season, which gives the playhouse plenty of time to build trust and interest from patrons: Come for “Waitress” in May, stay for “My Best Friend’s Wedding” in October.

“There has to be an institutional commitment to it because it is a long game,” King Militello said. “You can’t dip your toe into it. It’s a commitment from the board and the institution to say, ‘We’re making this investment of time and money and accepting that not everything is going to succeed.’ It’s also a challenge for audiences. There are a lot of people out there who want to see things that they are familiar with, and asking them to come on the journey to experience something new can be challenging. Ogunquit has such a good, strong subscriber base, and they’ve really trained their audiences to embrace this.”

Pat and Dale Douglas of Wells lived in Connecticut for years and often enjoyed local theater. When they moved to his home state two years ago, they bought season tickets to the Ogunquit Playhouse. They came out to a weekday matinee performance of “My Best Friend’s Wedding” last week even though they have never seen the movie. Not every show is their favorite, but they know they’ll always have a good time. They’ve already bought their subscription for next year.

“We always come see everything,” Pat Douglas, 79, said before the show. “I’m pretty open.”

Irene Safley and Paul Quee of Randolph, Massachusetts, usually take a trip to Ogunquit in the fall. The playhouse is the major draw. They prefer musicals, but they bought tickets last year to see the play based on “The Da Vinci Code.” They didn’t know the story, and the unfamiliar title did give them some pause.

“I’m a little bit more nervous,” Safley, 76, said. “I think about it more.”

Safley said they were glad they read up on the plot in advance because the story was complex, but they enjoyed the performance and were glad to give it a chance.

“We will come and see anything that’s here,” she said.

Theater professionals who have developed works at the Ogunquit Playhouse spoke highly of their experience. They said the staff is flexible and insightful without being too heavy-handed.

In 2012, a theater in Nashville premiered a musical based on the classic film “The Nutty Professor.” Rupert Holmes wrote the book and lyrics, Marvin Hamlisch composed the music and original “Nutty Professor” Jerry Lewis directed. Holmes said the show was well received. But Hamlisch died during the run; Lewis, soon after. The show stalled for years until Kinney reached out to Holmes. He had seen the premiere and wondered if Holmes would be interested in developing the musical further at Ogunquit Playhouse. He and the team at Ogunquit were willing to do the work of untangling the rights from multiple entities in order to stage the show.

“They started a process that showed what kind of tenacity and resources Ogunquit has,” Holmes said.

Ogunquit Playhouse hosted a major reading in New York. Holmes wrote entirely new songs and tweaked the storyline. “The Nutty Professor” finally got its day in 2022. A representative from a major licensing company saw the show and is now in talks with Holmes. A cast album will be out this year. Holmes likened the experience with Ogunquit to “a fabulous creature in a block of ice and bringing it back to life.”

“Brad has made Ogunquit a place that you consider as one of the places you might open a show to learn about it and explore it and see how it works with an audience before you take it to Broadway,” he said.

Kathleen Marshall is the director and choreographer for this debut production of “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” She said the process of preparing the show for the stage this year was a whirlwind – just three weeks of rehearsals and a few nights of previews. She said the most important feedback on a first production comes from the audience. Which jokes are landing? Which songs need to be moved to a different scene? She’s hopeful that the work will continue to develop based on what she’s learned from the patrons in Ogunquit.

“The audiences have been incredibly responsive, which is great,” Marshall said. “We all look at each other and say, ‘This is great first production, but we know there’s work to be done.’ We’re already trying to schedule meetings with the writers and creative teams to talk about where we are and what everybody thinks needs attention. Some of that work may happen, but not until you have a next production, not until you know when and where that will be.”

The pandemic dealt a devastating blow to theaters and, in turn, the prospects for new plays and musicals. American Theatre Magazine recently reported that the number of full productions this fall is still below what it was before 2020. Many theaters have leaned on known titles to bring audiences back to their seats.

“It is definitely harder than it was before the pandemic,” Backus said. “Some of that is trying to bring audiences back, and some people have done that by pivoting toward classic works, things that have had a long life in New York and London. There are other people who want to support living playwrights, and we want to tell stories about now.”

King Militello said some theaters have just not been in a place to take financial risks.

“I think there are a number of theaters that haven’t made that commitment as strongly as Ogunquit has to continue to put new work on their stages now for fear that people will not come see them,” King Militello said. “If you stop the process of continuing to offer new work, you almost have to start the process from scratch again.”

The team at the Ogunquit Playhouse is trying to strike a balance between new and familiar. The premieres of recent years have been recognizable subjects – “The Da Vinci Code” is a global bestselling novel, and “My Best Friend’s Wedding” is rom-com canon – so audiences don’t have to take as big a leap. Kinney said he could not disclose the details of a commission in the works right now, but the subject is “a big pop icon.”

“The familiarity hook is important for the main stage at this point, no question about it,” he said. “And so what is relatable? How can people quickly associate themselves with that product and find a desire to want to put their hard-earned money down to see it? Because without our audiences and our donors, as artists, we can’t do our work.”

He said his eventual goal is to have a smaller second venue where the playhouse faces less pressure to fill a roughly 650-seat theater and can take more risks.

” ‘Hamilton,’ no one knew what that was,” Kinney said. “No one knew what ‘Rent’ was. Somebody had to believe in those titles before they became familiar.”