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Artist
Development
Usual Suspects:
A network of 500 affiliated theatre artists - comprised of actors, playwrights, dramaturgs, designers and directors--are
at the heart of NYTW's development activities. The Usual Suspects receive tickets to all NYTW productions; the opportunity to make direct submissions of their scripts to the artistic staff and develop studio projects under the
auspices of the Jonathan Larson Lab Studio; and access to their own membership website that provides a contact database and announcements of Suspects' productions across the country. Perhaps most importantly, Suspects are provided the highly valuable commodity of free rehearsal space for developmental work in our 3rd Floor Studio or
65-seat 4th Street Theatre.
Mondays @ 3:
From September-May, NYTW hosts a reading of a work-in-progress every Monday at 3pm. Throughout the 2010/11 Season, NYTW facilitated between thirty and fifty developmental readings as part of Mondays @ 3 reading series. Each piece included in the Mondays @ 3 series is part of a positive forum that nurtures work at its earliest stages, garners attention from NYTW literary and casting staff and receives a constructive feedback session with staff, actors and other artists through the Liz Lerman Critical Response Process. Some of the artists scheduled to participate in 2011/12 are playwrights Naomi Wallace, Matthew Lopez, Amy Freed and David Greenspan and directors Doug Hughes, Lisa Peterson, Daniel Fish and Daniella Topol.
Mondays @ 3 Archives
Jonathan Larson Lab Studio:
Born from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's challenge grant and created in 2001, the Jonathan Larson Lab is a memorial to the creator of Rent that gives emerging and established theatre artists essential resources, a nurturing creative environment, and an open canvas for exploring their ideas and developing their work. Some of the production-oriented works have developed into full productions at NYTW and other theatres around the country, including Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's Aftermath, Lisa Peterson and Denis O'Hare's An Iliad, Lameece Issaq and Jacob Kader's Food and Fadwa, Will Power's The Seven, Martha Clarke's KAOS, Beckett Shorts with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Elevator Repair Service's The Select (The Sun Also Rises) & The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928) and Kate Moira Ryan and Linda Chapman's The Beebo Brinker Chronicles.
Current Larson Lab Studio projects in the 2011/12 Season include a conversation series with actors moderated by Usual Suspect Nick Westrate; the Founders Project, created by Laura Flanders and Alex Lewin, which reclaims texts from American History; and a collaboration with the French director Joel Pommerat.
Larson Lab Studio Archives |
Summer Residencies:
Every August for the past twenty years, NYTW has invited artists to spend a week at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire to further the development of a new play or solo performance. Over the course of our three week residency at Dartmouth, six projects receive an intensive workshop, constructive feedback, a staged reading for the public at Dartmouth's Hopkins Center for the Arts and the attention of a dramaturg, actors and NYTW staff members. There are also often additional spaces for individual theatre artists to serve as artists-in-residence. Past summer residencies have also been hosted by Vassar College, The Hotchkiss School and Choate-Rosemary Hall. |
Shana Gold, Lameece Issaq and Jacob Kader
working on Food And Fadwa at Dartmouth College. |
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Companies-in-Residence:
Companies-in-Residence are pre-existing, small theatre companies that receive support and resources from NYTW to further their growth and development. Our two companies-in-residence benefit from considerable mentorship and discussions with NYTW staff as well as from having access to NYTW office space and supplies. In addition, companies are often able to use NYTW' s rehearsal spaces and performance venues for free, which helps to alleviate the many costs that often hinder the artistic development of fledgling companies. Through this program, resident companies are able to gain exposure in ways they might not have been able to secure on their own.
Elevator Repair Service (ERS), one of New York’s most celebrated experimental ensembles, has been a Company-in-Residence for more than four years. NYTW provided significant developmental support of their most recent piece, THE SELECT (THE SUN ALSO RISES), which opened our 2011-2012 season. NYTW also produced ERS’s THE SOUND AND THE FURY (APRIL 7, 1928) in the Spring of 2008.
Noor Theatre, an emerging company dedicated to supporting, developing and presenting the work of theatre artists of Middle Eastern descent, has been a Company-in-Residence at NYTW for two years. For the past two seasons Noor has hosted their monthly reading series “Highlight” in NYTW’s 4th Street Theater and rehearsal room. This season Noor and NYTW are teaming up to co-produce Lameece Issaq and Jake Kader’s play FOOD AND FADWA, which has been in development with NYTW for a number of years. |
Suspects Abroad:
In 2005, NYTW launched Suspects Abroad, its cultural exchange initiative. This program supports distinctive opportunities for NYTW's community of artists, the Usual Suspects, to travel with small groups of their colleagues to theatre festivals around the world, providing an immersion experience in some of the world's most vibrant contemporary arts communities. The Suspects Abroad program was designed to elevate the activities of the Usual Suspects, provide an infusion of new theatrical ideas and techniques into American theatre and create opportunities for multidimensional artistic growth.
Usual Suspects have traveled to the West Bank and Israel, the Theatertreffen in Berlin, Germany, the Dialog Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, the Golden Mask Festival in Moscow, Russia, a Baltic Adventure to St. Petersburg, Rigo and Vilnius and to Budapest, Hungary. |
NYTW Usual Suspects Christopher Ashley, Michael John Garces and Lisa Peterson in
Berlin's Reichstag. |
Fellowships:
Since 1995, New York Theatre Workshop's Emerging Artists Fellowships have provided promising young theatre artists with essential support to assist their development, as well as access to the substantial resources of an off-Broadway producing theatre and community of artists. Specifically designed to identify artists of color, this program grew out of NYTW's fundamental belief that a diversity of thought, experience and culture is crucial to theatrical innovation.
Activities include participation in our Mondays @ 3 reading series, which take place regularly throughout the year and are attended by NYTW artistic staff and members of the Usual Suspects, the Workshop's community of
affiliated artists. In the past, fellows have also participated in international travel through NYTW including a trip to Venezuela in 2008, to the Dialog Festival in Wroclaw, Poland in 2007, and to the Festival Transameriques in Montreal in the summer of 2010. |
Will Power and NYTW Emerging Artists Fellows
NYTW's Summer Residency at Vassar College.
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Fellowship Program Goals
• Nurture and cultivate artistic excellence, new visions in theatre and artists who create work that speaks
to a broader audience
• Discover emerging artists and develop voices that reflect the complexity and vibrancy of New York City as a crossroads
of cultures
• Provide opportunities for individuals who are under-served by today's mainstream theatre world
• Develop a community that supports and shares in the creation of new work
• Foster leadership, both artistic and administrative, for a new generation of theatre artists |
These goals are realized through a variety of artist development activities and a Summer Residency, which welcome Fellows into an industrious network of theatre artists with whom they can collaborate, and through stipends that provide a degree of financial freedom to enable them to devote time to their pursuits.
The program also offers the Fellows opportunities to develop works-in-progress and to see performances together. Monthly workshop meetings and frequent mentoring sessions provide a comfortable and ongoing forum for discussion concerning the Fellows' progress and interests.
Fellows have access to free rehearsal space (based on availability), use of the photocopier and office supplies and other resources that greatly assist in the creation of artistic projects. |
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