Immersive Sundance program relocating to Newnan’s Dunaway Gardens in 2026

The 64-acre spot south of Atlanta is being remade as a luxury sanctuary and will be the Episodic Program lab’s permanent home.

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While the city of Atlanta fell short in its bid last year to become the new locale of the Sundance Film Festival, it has become the home of one of the Sundance Institute’s signature features.

Sundance’s Episodic Program lab — which began in 2014 — will be held in Newnan’s Dunaway Gardens beginning in May 2026, says Tena Clark, the owner of the 64-acre historic location. Over a six-day period, the immersive lab will help emerging writers develop their scripted episodic pilots with the assistance of mentors through the Sundance Institute. Next year’s invited class has not yet been announced. 

Clark, a music producer who moved to the area from Los Angeles in 2015, is a huge supporter of Sundance, attending every year, and is good friends with Pat Mitchell, the former Sundance board chair, who lives in Atlanta. Clark started talking up Dunaway Gardens about three years ago to Sundance execs, who traveled to visit it. “Everybody came down and fell in love with it, because they knew eventually that there would be a succession to the Institute, just like there is now for the Festival,” she says. “This is not a one-off or anything; this is a permanent home.”

Dunaway Gardens was built in 1916 by Hetty Jane Dunaway, who Clark calls a visionary — an actress, singer, dancer, producer, director and writer. In the late ’30s and ’40s, the location became the Hollywood place to come. Walt and Roy Disney would go there to write, and other guests included Tallulah Bankhead, Esther Williams and Minnie Pearl, who dedicates a few chapters about Dunaway Gardens in her autobiography.

In 1961, Dunaway passed away, and her husband left the property to a niece and a nephew. “They really didn’t have the same love for this place or knew about the arts, and it was forgotten for 41 years. Nobody did anything with it — it was covered up with kudzu and ivy and privet. When you would come down the road, a lot of older people in Atlanta would say you would not even know that it ever existed.”

That’s the way it remained until 2001, when a retired couple, Roger and Jennifer Bigham, bought it and went about restoring it. Once she had relocated to the area, Clark tried for seven years to purchase the property before the owners relented. In addition to Dunaway Gardens itself, she started the Dunaway Gardens Foundation and currently sits on its board.

Under Clark’s watch, Dunaway Gardens is in the process of being remade as a luxury sanctuary and will eventually house, among other amenities, a lodge, event center, screening room, restaurants and a 700-seat amphitheater. She expects the project to be finished in 2028.

Upcoming concerts, up to a dozen a year, will also be on tap. A Magical Holiday with Chaka Khan was set to be the first concert at the site in 65 years but has been rescheduled for next year. The Debbie Allen Dance Academy will eventually be on-site as well, possibly to begin construction in 2026.  

“Debbie is literally one of my very best friends, and we have worked together for decades,” says Clark. “She loves Dunaway, and her husband’s originally from Georgia, so it was just a no-brainer. She had already done {work} here once during the summer each year, because her Academy serves underserved kids.”  Allen’s school is currently located in Los Angeles.

Visitors to the Gardens, according to Clark, have different takes on their experience. “You do not feel like you’re 30 minutes south of the airport. A lot of people say they feel like they are in North Georgia, up in the mountains, and then {others} say they feel like they are in Europe or Italy. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Clark is working hard to live up to Dunaway’s vision — and what she created. It’s vital for her to expand the original vision and not mess it up. “I’m just working hard to stay on track with that. I will not sell out to things that are not in the DNA here.”

Yet she also wants to keep up with the legacy Sundance has established. “The team just felt like this was absolutely the perfect landing place for the Institute’s move. To me, this is about a place where creatives can come to make a difference. That’s what Sundance was. That’s what {Sundance founder Robert} Redford wanted there, and that’s what we are creating here.”

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Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theatre Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband Craig.