They took their new jobs less than two years ago: a diverse group of ambitious arts administrators eager to see how their ideas and dreams might influence theaters around the country.

Now they find themselves confronting a situation they never could have imagined: leading their theaters through a global pandemic.

On Wednesday, the new arts administrators from four important American regional theaters, joined by the Public Theater in New York, said they would commission a set of short plays from writers whose financial lives have been upended by the shutdown of arts organizations as people stay home to contain the coronavirus. The theaters said they had two major goals: to steer a bit of money to struggling artists and to inspire new work at a tough time.

“As soon as the writing was on the wall, and everybody was canceling and going to streaming, it seemed important to not just share our content virtually, but to engage people in the act of making theater and participating in the art form in a different way,” said Stephanie Ybarra, the artistic director of Baltimore Center Stage. Ybarra has a running group text with three other new artistic directors — Jacob G. Padrón at Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Hana Sharif at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis, and Maria Manuela Goyanes at Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in Washington — and they jumped on the phone.