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The Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST) is a non-profit membership-based developmental theatre located in Hell's Kitchen, New York City. It has a dual mission of nurturing individual theatre artists and developing new American plays. [1]
The Ensemble Studio Theatre — commonly known as “EST”— was founded in 1968 by Curt Dempster. [2] With 589 ensemble artists concentrated mainly in New York City, EST has been under the artistic direction of William Carden since 2007.
EST hosts three groups of playwrights: Youngblood, EST's OBIE-winning collective of emerging professional playwrights under the age of 30; the EST Playwrights Unit, a diverse group of playwrights that comprises both EST members and non-members; and Going to the River, a group of women playwrights of color with distinct and powerful voices. EST also cultivates the development of plays during a three-week annual tenure as the resident theater company of the Southampton Writers Conference, in partnership with the SUNY Stony Brook's MFA summer playwriting program.
EST has presented its new, short play festival, the Marathon of One-Act Plays, annually for over thirty years, and it is a public forum for new works by both well-established and up-and-coming writers. The Marathon has been credited for reviving the one-act play form, inspiring many similar festivals across the country. Past playwrights include Horton Foote, Tina Howe, David Mamet, Shirley Lauro, Jaquelyn Reingold, and José Rivera.
Since 1968, EST has produced over 6,000 new works. It produces approximately 150 projects each year, ranging from fully produced mainstage productions to a variety of in-progress workshops and readings.
EST has a membership of over 600 theatre artists, including playwrights, directors, actors, designers and managers. [3]
Youngblood is Ensemble Studio Theatre's collective of emerging professional playwrights under the age of 30. Founded in 1993.
Plays by current and former Youngblood playwrights have been performed at The Royal Court Theatre, Lincoln Center, Playwrights Horizons, Second Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Mark Taper Forum, the Vineyard Theater, the Atlantic Theater Company and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, including award winners such as Annie Baker's The Aliens and Amy Herzog's 4000 Miles, and have been adapted by film and television companies, including alumni Lucy Alibar's Juicy and Delicious which was adapted into the film Beasts of The Southern Wild.
Youngblood is currently run by Co-Artistic Directors Graeme Gillis and RJ Tolan.
Playwrights Horizons is a not-for-profit Off-Broadway theater located in New York City dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers, and lyricists, and to the production of their new work.
Atlantic Theater Company is an Off-Broadway non-profit theater, whose mission is to produce great plays "simply and truthfully utilizing an artistic ensemble." The company was founded in 1985 by David Mamet, William H. Macy, and 30 of their acting students from New York University, inspired by the historical examples of the Group Theatre and Stanislavski. Atlantic believes that the story of a play and the intent of its playwright are at the core of the creative process.
Eliza Clark is an American actress and writer. She is the older sister of Spencer Treat Clark.
Theater in Chicago describes not only theater performed in Chicago, Illinois, but also to the movement in Chicago that saw a number of small, meagerly funded companies grow to institutions of national and international significance. Chicago had long been a popular destination for touring productions, as well as original productions that transfer to Broadway and other cities. According to Variety editor Gordon Cox, beside New York City, Chicago has one of the most lively theater scenes in the United States. As many as 100 shows could be seen any given night from 200 companies as of 2018, some with national reputations and many in creative "storefront" theaters, demonstrating a vibrant theater scene "from the ground up". According to American Theatre magazine, Chicago's theater is "justly legendary".
Qui Nguyen is an American playwright, television writer, director and screenwriter. He is best known for his plays She Kills Monsters and Vietgone. He is also known for writing Raya and the Last Dragon and Strange World.
Tina Howe is an American playwright. In a career that spans more than four decades, Howe's best-known works include Museum, The Art of Dining, Painting Churches, Coastal Disturbances, and Pride's Crossing.
The Phoenix Theatre has presented productions since 1983. An Equity house, the Phoenix presents the Midwest and Indiana premieres of many Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, and has presented 94 World Premieres. In May 2018, the Phoenix moved to a newly constructed, 20,000 square foot building, the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Centre, at 705 N. Illinois St. in the heart of downtown Indianapolis with two stages: the 144 seat Steve and Livia Russell Theatre and a flexible blackbox space, the Frank and Katrina Basile Theatre. At its previous location at 749 N. Park Ave. in downtown Indianapolis near Massachusetts Avenue, the Phoenix operated a 130-seat proscenium style Mainstage and 75-seat downstairs cabaret.
The New York Drama Critics' Circle is made up of 22 drama critics from daily newspapers, magazines and wire services based in the New York City metropolitan area. The organization is best known for its annual awards for excellence in theater.
Primary Stages was founded in 1984 by Casey Childs as an Off-Broadway not-for-profit theater company. In 2004, Primary Stages moved from its 99-seat home of 17 years at 354 West 45th Street to the 199-seat theater at 59E59 Theaters. In 2014, the company moved to The Duke on 42nd Street until 2016, when the Cherry Lane Theatre became the home for all Primary Stages productions.
Theater Mu,, located in Saint Paul, Minnesota, is an Asian American arts organization in the Midwest, the second largest in the country. According to Mu's website, the company name "Mu" is "the Korean pronunciation of the Chinese character Mu for the shaman-artist-warrior who connects the heavens and the earth through the tree of life."
Katori Hall is an American playwright, screenwriter, producer, actress, and director from Memphis, Tennessee. Hall's best known works include the hit television series P-Valley, the Tony-nominated Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and plays such as Hurt Village, Our Lady of Kibeho, Children of Killers, The Mountaintop, and The Hot Wing King, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Ako, or Ako Dachs, is a Japanese actress and founding Artistic Director of Amaterasu Za theatre company.
Amy Herzog is an American playwright. Her play 4000 Miles, which ran Off-Broadway in 2011, was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Her play Mary Jane, which ran Off-Broadway in 2017, won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. Herzog's plays have been produced Off-Broadway, and have received nominations for, among others: the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Actor and Actress ; the Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play ; and Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Play and Outstanding Actress in a Play (Belleville). She was a finalist for the 2012–2013 and 2016–2017 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
The Frog Prince is a play by American author, essayist, playwright, screenwriter and film director David Mamet. The play is about half an hour long and tells the traditional story of the haughty prince who has been placed under a spell which has turned him into a frog and can only be restored to his original form by a willing kiss. The play is more cheerful than most of Mamet's work and contains none of the coarse language for which he is known.
Sheri Wilner is an American playwright.
The Kilroys' List is a gender parity initiative to end the "systematic underrepresentation of female and trans playwrights" in the American theater industry. Gender disparity is defined as the gap of unproduced playwrights' whose plays are being discriminated against based on the writer's gender identification and intersectional identities of race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, age, and ability. Recent statistical research released in November 2015, entitled The Count, gathered that 22% of total surveyed professional productions from 2011-2013 annual seasons were written by women playwrights, 3.8% of the total were written by women playwrights of color, and 0.4% of the total were written by foreign women playwrights of color. 78% of total surveyed professional productions were written by men playwrights.
Sam Gold is an American theater director and actor. He has directed both musicals and plays, on Broadway and Off-Broadway. He won the 2015 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for Fun Home.
Red Stitch Actors Theatre is an ensemble theatre company based in Melbourne, Australia.
Leah Nanako Winkler is a Japanese-born American playwright currently living in New York City. Her play God Said This won the 2018 Yale Drama Series Prize. Her play, Two Mile Hollow, recently won the Francesca Primus Prize. She is a recipient of a 2020 Steinberg Prize in Distinguished Playwrighting.
Coordinates: 40°46′1.03″N73°59′34.77″W / 40.7669528°N 73.9929917°W