Former names | Wilma Project (1973–1996) |
---|---|
Address | 265 Broad Street, Philadelphia Pennsylvania USA |
Coordinates | 39°56′50.4″N75°09′52.2″W / 39.947333°N 75.164500°W |
Capacity | 296 |
Opened | 1996 |
Website | |
https://wilmatheater.org/ |
The Wilma Theater is a non-profit theater company located at 265 S. Broad Street at the corner of Spruce Street in the Avenue of the Arts area of Center City, Philadelphia. The company's current 296-seat theater opened in 1996 and was designed by Hugh Hardy. [1]
The Wilma Theater began in 1973 as the "Wilma Project", founded to produce original material and to develop community-oriented artists. The name "Wilma" refers to an imaginary oppressed sister of Shakespeare created by Virginia Woolf. [2]
Blanka Zizka and Jiri Zizka from Czechoslovakia joined the project in 1979 as artists-in-residence, and later took over artistic leadership, changing the name to the Wilma Theater. The company staged their productions at a variety of different theaters, in particular a 100-seat converted garage on Sansom Street, but opened their current 296-seat theater on S. Broad Street in 1996.
Jiri Zizka left the theater at the end of the 2009–2010 season and died in January 2012. [3] [4]
As of 2018 [update] , the theater had won 68 Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre and received 238 nominations. [5]
On May 22 2024, it was announced that the Wilma would be the recipient of the 2024 Regional Theatre Tony Award, which comes with a $25,000 grant. [6] One of the objects of the award is promoting what often amounts to the incubators of new productions. The Wilma has been noted for this, due in part to its unique organizational structure: it switched from one artistic director, which is standard, to four in early 2020, and then down to three when Blanka Zizka retired in 2021 (leaving James Ijames, Yury Urnov, and Morgan Green), and it also has a permanent troupe of in-house actors, known as the Hothouse. [7] [8] Zizka credited the Hothouse for the award, describing them as the "soul" of the Wilma. [8] WHYY's arts and culture reporter Peter Crimmins has similarly noted that "The Wilma is distinctive not only for the excellence of its original productions, but [also] for its unique approach to running a theater company." [8]
The Regional Theatre Tony Award is a special recognition Tony Award given annually to a regional theater company in the United States. The winner is recommended by a committee of drama critics.
The Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre is an annual, nationally-recognized award program that is sponsored by Theatre Philadelphia for professional theater productions in the Greater Philadelphia area. Each season culminates with an awards ceremony.
Alison Fraser is an American actress, voice actress and singer who has appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in television and film. In concert, she has performed at such venues as Carnegie Hall, The White House, Town Hall, The Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The Tisch Center for the Arts, The Folger Shakespeare Library, The Wilma, The Emelin, Joe's Pub, 54 Below, and Symphony Space.
Second Stage Theater is a non-profit theater company that presents work by living American writers both on and off Broadway. It is based in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, and is affiliated with the League of Resident Theatres.
Lantern Theater Company is a not-for-profit regional theater founded in 1994 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Led by founding artistic director Charles McMahon and executive director Stacy Dutton, the Lantern produces a mix of classics, modern, and original works for the stage, an audience enrichment series that provides an insider's look at each production, and Illumination, its Barrymore Award-winning education program that engages local students and adults in the world of theater and nurtures their artistic expression through in-school residencies, student matinee performances, and teaching artist training for after school programs.
The Arden Theatre Company is a professional regional theatre company located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The company includes three theatres: the 175-seat Arcadia Stage and the 360-seat F. Otto Haas Stage, located in the main property at 40 N 2nd Street; and the 100-seat Bob and Selma Horan Studio Theater at the Hamilton Family Arts Center up the block at 62 N 2nd Street. In addition to the theater spaces, the two properties also house the Arden's administrative offices, production shops, rehearsal space, and classrooms for its educational programming through Arden Drama School.
Marie Anne Chiment has created sets and costumes for hundreds of productions across the United States for opera, theatre and dance. Chiment’s sets and costumes have been used on the stages of Santa Fe Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Kennedy Center, Wolftrap Opera and Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre. She has designed national tours of Grease and Carousel, as well as the GLAMA award winning world premiere of Patience & Sarah for the Lincoln Center Festival.
Yellowman is a play written by Dael Orlandersmith. It was the 2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist for drama.
Jennie Elizabeth Eisenhower is an American actress, director, and realtor. She has performed in Off-Broadway theater productions and in regional theatre, being nominated for seven Barrymore Awards and winning two of them. She has played minor roles in several feature films. She is a great-granddaughter of Dwight D. Eisenhower and granddaughter of Richard Nixon, both presidents of the United States.
Jayne Houdyshell is an American actress. Known for being a prolific character actor in theater, film, and television, Houdyshell has received numerous accolades including a Tony Award, two Obie Awards, and a Drama Desk Award.
InterAct Theatre Company is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A founding member of the National New Play Network.
EgoPo Classic Theater is a Philadelphia-based nonprofit repertory theater specializing in performing "Classic Theater on the Edge," often producing works of a collaborative nature that incorporates original music, dance, and masks. It was founded in 1991 in San Francisco by Lane Savadove who remains the company's Artistic Director. EgoPo has staged over two dozen productions and hundreds of performances in Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans, Chicago, Washington D.C., and internationally, in Indonesia and Croatia. A volunteer Board of Directors governs EgoPo. EgoPo is headquartered at 1219 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107.
Anne Kauffman is an American director known primarily for her work on new plays, mainly in the New York area. She is a founding member of the theater group the Civilians. She made her Broadway debut with the Scott McPherson play Marvin's Room (2017) and returned with the revival of the Lorraine Hansberry play The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (2023) and Mary Jane (2024).
Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj is an Indo-Afro-Caribbean American theater director, playwright, producer and activist. He holds an associate degree in Criminal Justice from St. John's University, a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Arts from St. John's University, and a Master of Fine Arts in Theatrical Directing from Brooklyn College. He is currently the Associate Artistic Producer of Milwaukee Repertory Theater. He started Rebel Theater Company in 2003 in New York City, and served as Producing Artistic Director. He is the former Artistic Director of New Freedom Theatre in Philadelphia. He is the Third Vice President for the Brooklyn Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He is the Chair of the Equity in the Arts and Culture Committee for the NAACP Brooklyn Branch.
George W. Faison is an American dancer, choreographer, teacher, and theater producer, and winner of a 1975 Tony, a Drama Desk Award, and a 1991 nominee for the Emmy Award for choreography. He was a featured dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, founder of the George Faison Universal Dance Experience, and co-founder/producing artistic director of the Faison Firehouse Theater.
Blanka Zizka is a Czechoslovakia-born American theatre director and playwright. She is currently the Founding Artistic Director of The Wilma Theater.
Eisa Davis is an American playwright, actress and singer-songwriter. She is known for her work as the co-creator of the Warriors concept album with Lin-Manuel Miranda. Her previous works include the plays Bulrusher and Angela's Mixtape. For her stage acting in New York, she won an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Performance. She resides in Brooklyn.
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.
Desdemona Chiang is a Taiwan-born American theatre director, and co-artistic director of Azeotrope in Seattle, Washington. Her directing credits include the Guthrie Theater, Alley Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Repertory Theatre, California Shakespeare Theater, Playmakers Repertory Company, and ACT Theatre. She directs in a variety of genres, including Shakespeare, new plays, and musicals.
Theatre Horizon is a theater group located in Norristown, Pennsylvania.
Notes