Amy Sullivan, 54, executive at O'Neill Center

NEW YORK -- Amy Sullivan, who as executive director of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn., restored the finances of an institution long known for discovering significant playwrights early in their careers, died on June 10 at her home in Old Lyme, Conn. She was 54.

The cause was cancer, her husband, Bruce Josephy, said.

Ms. Sullivan was executive director of the O'Neill Center from September 2003 until January.

"While never in danger of shutting down, we were going through some pretty red budget times when Amy took over," Ms. Sullivan's successor, Preston Whiteway, said Monday.

The center, which overlooks Long Island Sound, opened in 1964 to commemorate Eugene O'Neill and to find new playwriting talent. It brought significant early notice to such playwrights as August Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein, and John Patrick Shanley.

The center's first executive director, George C. White, retired in 2000, and over the next three years donations slipped.

Ms. Sullivan started or resumed several programs that revived private donations and secured grants from the State of Connecticut, Whiteway said.

She restarted the Cabaret Conference, a festival held each August that introduces budding cabaret performers. She created the National Theater Institute, a summer training program for theater students.

Under Ms. Sullivan's direction, Monte Cristo Cottage in New London, Conn., O'Neill's home in his youth and the setting for two of his most famous plays, "Ah, Wilderness!" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night," was renovated through a $212,000 state grant. The cottage is a National Historic Landmark.

Whiteway said that Ms. Sullivan's fund-raising skills brought in an estimated $750,000 in private donations. The center has an annual budget of about $2.5 million.

Ms. Sullivan was born in Newark on March 31, 1953.

Besides her husband, she leaves her mother, Catherine Zizza Sullivan, and a son, Dan.

She graduated from Upsala College with a degree in literature and theater arts.

After working as an assistant to several Broadway producers, then as a fund-raiser for several institutions, she became development director of the O'Neill Center in 1993.

While Ms. Sullivan was executive director, the center produced "In the Heights" by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegria Hudes.

The musical, set in the Dominican community of Washington Heights, is now playing off-Broadway.