Address | 416 West 42nd Street Manhattan, New York City United States |
---|---|
Owner | Playwrights Horizon, Inc. |
Type | Off-Broadway |
Capacity | Mainstage: 198 Peter Jay Sharp: 128 |
Website | |
www |
Playwrights Horizons is a not-for-profit American 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.
Under the leadership of artistic director Adam Greenfield [1] [2] and former managing director Leslie Marcus, [3] Playwrights Horizons encourages the new work of veteran writers while nurturing an emerging generation of theater artists. Writers are supported through every stage of their growth with a series of development programs: script and score evaluations, commissions, readings, musical theater workshops, Studio and Mainstage productions.
Playwrights Horizons was founded in 1971 at the Clark Center Y by Robert Moss, before moving to 42nd Street in 1977 where it was one of the original theaters that started Theater Row by converting adult entertainment venues into off Broadway theaters. The current building was built on the site of a former burlesque, which previously served as the off-Broadway Maidman Playhouse between 1960 and 1966. [4]
André Bishop served as Artistic Director from 1981 to 1991, followed by Don Scardino who served through 1995. Tim Sanford served as Artistic Director from 1996 until July 2020, serving as "outgoing Artistic Director" during the 2020-2021 season. [1] Adam Greenfield took over as Artistic Director in July 2020. [1]
Playwrights Horizons has worked with over 375 writers and is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. In 2005, it was among 406 New York City arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. [5]
Playwrights Horizons' auxiliary programs include the Playwrights Horizons Theater School, which is affiliated with NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and Ticket Central, a central box office that supports the off-Broadway performing arts community.
Past productions include seven Pulitzer Prize winners:
Other notable productions include:
James Elliot Lapine is an American stage director, playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion. He has frequently collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and William Finn.
Nilo Cruz is a Cuban-American playwright and pedagogue. With his award of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Anna in the Tropics, he became the second Latino so honored, after Nicholas Dante.
Craig Lucas is an American playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, musical actor, and film director.
The Soho Repertory Theatre, known as Soho Rep, is an American Off-Broadway theater company based in New York City which is notable for producing avant-garde plays by contemporary writers. The company, described as a "cultural pillar", is currently located in a 65-seat theatre in the TriBeCa section of lower Manhattan. The company, and the projects it has produced, have won multiple prizes and earned critical acclaim, including numerous Obie Awards, Drama Desk Awards, Drama Critics' Circle Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize. A recent highlight was winning the Drama Desk Award for Sustained Achievement for "nearly four decades of artistic distinction, innovative production, and provocative play selection."
Alice Ripley is an American actress, singer, songwriter and mixed media artist. She is known, in particular, for her various roles on Broadway in musicals, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Next to Normal and Side Show. She most recently played three roles in the short-lived Broadway musical, American Psycho. Alice Ripley has released albums with her band, RIPLEY, including the single, "Beautiful Eyes", released in February 2012. She also performs as a solo artist, while in February 2011 she released Alice Ripley Daily Practice, Volume 1, a stripped-down collection of acoustic rock covers.
Stephen Adly Guirgis is an American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He is a member and a former co-artistic director of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company. His plays have been produced both Off-Broadway and on Broadway, as well as in the UK. His play Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Bruce Norris is an American character actor and playwright associated with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago. His play Clybourne Park won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Matthew Maher is an American actor. He is best known for his roles in Bringing Out the Dead (1999), Dogma (1999), Jersey Girl (2004), Gone Baby Gone (2007), It's Kind of a Funny Story (2010), Grand Theft Auto V (2013) Captain Marvel (2019), Funny Pages (2022), Air (2023), and Our Flag Means Death (2022–2023).
Annie Baker is an American playwright, film director, and teacher who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her play The Flick. Among her works are the Shirley, Vermont plays, which take place in the fictional town of Shirley: Circle Mirror Transformation, Nocturama, Body Awareness, and The Aliens. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2017. Her debut film Janet Planet released in 2023 to critical acclaim.
Clybourne Park is a 2010 play by Bruce Norris inspired by Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun (1959). It portrays fictional events set during and after the Hansberry play, and is loosely based on historical events that took place in the city of Chicago. It premiered in February 2010 at Playwrights Horizons in New York. The play received its UK premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in London in a production directed by Dominic Cooke. The play received its Chicago premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in a production directed by Steppenwolf ensemble member Amy Morton. As described by The Washington Post, the play "applies a modern twist to the issues of race and housing and aspirations for a better life." Clybourne Park was awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play.
Barrington Stage Company (BSC) is a regional theatre company in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. It was co-founded in 1995 by Artistic Director Julianne Boyd, and former Managing Director Susan Sperber in Sheffield, Massachusetts. In 2004, BSC developed, workshopped, and premiered the hit musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Following the successful Broadway run, which nabbed two Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Featured Actor, BSC made the move to a more permanent home in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
Detroit is a play by Lisa D'Amour. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer and Susan Smith Blackburn Prizes. The play premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago in 2010 and subsequently ran Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in fall 2012. The play won the Obie Award for Best New American Play in 2013.
Pam MacKinnon is an American theatre director. She has directed for the stage Off-Broadway, on Broadway and in regional theatre. She won the Obie Award for Directing and received a Tony Award nomination, Best Director, for her work on Clybourne Park. In 2013 she received the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for a revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She was named artistic director of American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, California on January 23, 2018.
The Hangar Theatre is a non-profit, regional theatre located at 801 Taughannock Boulevard in Ithaca, NY. Its mainstage season and children's shows occur during the summer, but the Hangar, and other organizations, utilize the space year-round for special events. The tenets of the Hangar's mission statement are to enrich, enlighten, educate and entertain.
Amy Herzog is an American playwright. She is known for her poignant and character-driven plays that explore themes of family dynamics, personal relationships, and the complexities of human experience. She has received a Drama Desk Award as well as a nomination for a Tony Award.
Jordan Harrison is an American playwright. He grew up on Bainbridge Island, Washington. His play Marjorie Prime was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The Flick is a play by Annie Baker that received the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and won the 2013 Obie Award for Playwriting. The Flick premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in 2013.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is an American playwright. His plays Gloria and Everybody were finalists for the 2016 and 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His play Appropriate made his Broadway debut as a playwright in 2023 and earned him his first Tony Award. His additional plays include An Octoroon and The Comeuppance. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016.
James Ijames is an American playwright, actor, and professor originally from Bessemer City, North Carolina. He received his B.A. in Drama from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and earned his MFA in Acting from Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is now based. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Villanova University and former co-artistic director of the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. Ijames is a founding member of Orbiter 3, Philadelphia's first playwright producing collective. His adaptation of Hamlet, titled Fat Ham, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2022 after premiering as a "digital production" at the Wilma in 2021. A second production ran at The Public Theater during the summer of 2022, before opening on Broadway in April 2023. He is the recipient of the 2018 Whiting Award for drama and the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Philadelphia Theatre Artist.
Martyna Majok is a Polish-born American playwright who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Cost of Living. She emigrated to the United States as a child and grew up in New Jersey. Majok studied playwriting at the Yale School of Drama and Juilliard School. Her plays are often politically engaged, feature dark humor, and experiment with structure and time.