Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company is an Obie Award and Caffe Cino Award winning [1] NYC downtown theatre company first established in 2000, with a mission towards the creation and production of theatrical events based in stage combat and dark comedy with a comic book edge. They began on the campus of Ohio University, moving to NYC in 2002. The company has been a resident company at Center Stage, NY (2005–2008), HERE Arts Center (2009–2010), Incubator Arts Project (2011–2013), and The New Ohio Theater & IRT (2013–2015). The company is led by artistic director Qui Nguyen and Robert Ross Parker. Past productions include the cult Off-Off Broadway shows: Geek!, The Inexplicable Redemption of Agent G, Alice in Slasherland, Soul Samurai, [2] Fight Girl Battle World, [3] Men of Steel, [4] Vampire Cowboy Trilogy, [5] and Living Dead in Denmark, [6] which featured special effects by Chuck Varga, co-founder of the shock rock band GWAR. The first theatre company to ever be sponsored by New York Comic Con, Vampire Cowboys is often credited for being the pioneers of "Geek Theatre", [7] a subgenre of theatre that often incorporates action-adventure, sci-fi, gaming, and/or comic book themes into live theatre. The company was praised by The Village Voice as "New York's Best Army of Geeks". [8] The Vampire Cowboys had their work documented in a doctoral dissertation on martial arts on the American stage from Tufts University in 2011. [9]
Eric Michael Bogosian is an American actor, playwright, monologuist, novelist, and historian. Descended from Armenian-American immigrants, he grew up in Watertown and Woburn, Massachusetts, and attended the University of Chicago and Oberlin College. His play Talk Radio, was a finalist for the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Bogosian also wrote and starred in the 1988 film adaptation, for which he won a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.
David Ives is an American playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. He is perhaps best known for his comic one-act plays; The New York Times in 1997 referred to him as the "maestro of the short form". Ives has also written dramatic plays, narrative stories, and screenplays, has adapted French 17th and 18th-century classical comedies, and adapted 33 musicals for New York City's Encores! series.
Will Eno is an American playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. His play, Thom Pain was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2005. His play The Realistic Joneses appeared on Broadway in 2014, where it received a Drama Desk Special Award and was named Best Play on Broadway by USA Today, and best American play of 2014 by The Guardian. His play The Open House was presented Off-Broadway at the Signature Theatre in 2014 and won the Obie Award for Playwriting as well as other awards, and was on both TIME Magazine and Time Out New York 's Top Ten Plays of 2014.
Victoria Clark is an American actress, musical theatre soprano, and director. Clark has performed in numerous Broadway musicals and in other theatre, film and television works. Her voice can also be heard on various cast albums and in several animated films. In 2008, she released her first solo album titled Fifteen Seconds of Grace. A five-time Tony Award nominee, Clark won her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical in 2005 for her performance in The Light in the Piazza. She also won the Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, and the Joseph Jefferson Award for the role. She won a second Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical in 2023 for her performance in Kimberly Akimbo.
Lisa D'Amour is a playwright, performer, and former Carnival Queen from New Orleans. D'Amour is an alumna of New Dramatists. Her play Detroit was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Qui Nguyen is an American playwright, screenwriter and director. 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.
Sarah Ruhl is an American playwright, poet, professor, and essayist. Among her most popular plays are Eurydice (2003), The Clean House (2004), and In the Next Room (2009). She has been the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a distinguished American playwright in mid-career. Two of her plays have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and she received a nomination for Tony Award for Best Play. In 2020, she adapted her play Eurydice into the libretto for Matthew Aucoin's opera of the same name. Eurydice was nominated for Best Opera Recording at the 2023 Grammy Awards.
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is an American playwright, screenwriter, and comic book writer best known for his work for Marvel Comics and for the television series Glee (2011–2014), Big Love (2009–2011), Riverdale (2017–2023), Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018–2020) and Pretty Little Liars (2022–present). He is chief creative officer of Archie Comics.
Dixon Place is a theater organization in New York City dedicated to the development of works-in-progress from a broad range of performers and artists. It exists to serve the creative needs of artists—emerging, mid-career and established—who are creating new work in theater, dance, music, literature, puppetry, performance, variety and visual arts.
Kevin Cahoon is an American actor, director, writer, and singer-songwriter. In 2023, he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical and the Drama Desk Award for Best Featured Performance in a Musical for his performance in Shucked on Broadway.
Doric Wilson was an American playwright, director, producer, critic and gay rights activist.
Ken Urban is an American playwright, screenwriter, and musician based in New York. Urban is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and an affiliated writer at the Playwrights' Center.
Gina Gionfriddo is an American playwright and television writer. Her plays Becky Shaw and Rapture, Blister, Burn were finalists for the 2009 and 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, respectively. She has written for the television series Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, FBI: Most Wanted, The Alienist, and House of Cards.
Aurin Squire is an African-American playwright, screenwriter, and reporter. He has written numerous plays, while his reporting has appeared in The New Republic, Talking Points Memo, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, and ESPN, among other outlets.
The Vortex Theater Company was founded in 1983 by playwright, director, and actor Robert Coles and was originally dedicated to the mission of presenting new works by emerging playwrights.
Kitchen Theatre Company (KTC) is a non-profit professional theater company in Ithaca, New York that focuses on making “bold, intimate, and engaging" theater. The Kitchen was founded in 1991 and is now in its 27th season. KTC is a member of the Theatre Communications Group and operates under a Small Professional Theater contract with the Actors’ Equity Association.
Ars Nova is an Off-Broadway, non-profit theater in New York City's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. Ars Nova develops and produces theater, comedy and music created by artists in the early stages of their careers. Besides its Off-off Broadway home in Hell's Kitchen, Ars Nova also operates the former Barrow Street Theatre at Greenwich House as a space for Off-Broadway productions.
Michael Golamco is an American playwright and screenwriter for film and television. He is of Filipino and Chinese American descent.
Laura Eason is an American playwright and screenwriter.
Harrison David Rivers is an American playwright. Rivers' work has won him the Relentless Award, a GLAAD Media Award, a McKnight Fellowship for Playwrights, a Jerome Foundation Many Voices Fellowship, an Emerging Artist of Color Fellowship, a Van Lier Fellowship and the New York Stage & Film's Founders Award. He is based in Saint Paul, Minnesota and is married to Christopher Bineham.