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Playwrights Horizons announces Resident Company program launching with Clubbed Thumb

Posted by:	Official_Press_Release 01:42 pm EST 11/17/14

PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS ANNOUNCES NEW RESIDENT COMPANY PROGRAM AND WELCOMES CLUBBED THUMB AS ITS INAUGURAL RESIDENT COMPANY New program will enable smaller theater companies to focus resources on art rather than on real estate Playwrights Horizons (Tim Sanford, Artistic Director and Leslie Marcus, Managing Director) today announced the launch of its new Resident Company program. As a writer’s theater dedicated to the support and development of contemporary American playwrights, composers and lyricists and to the production of their new work, this new initiative will subsidize office, rehearsal and performance space for smaller theater companies who share an interest in American writers and who, like Playwrights Horizons, demonstrate a commitment to producing new plays. In the future, resident companies will also receive performance space in one of Playwrights Horizons’ venues. The lauded Clubbed Thumb (Maria Striar, Producing Artistic Director) will serve as the inaugural resident company in this effort to provide like-minded theater companies the space and resources to create more art, and expand their capacity to provide artistic opportunities to writers. The vision for the Resident Company program arose from Playwrights Horizons’ desire to expand the reach of support for new playwrights and plays and encourage more productions and wider audiences for new work. The program also seeks to lessen the financial burdens of renting costly rehearsal and performance space in the New York market. This initiative grew out of the organization’s strategic planning process, and the theater company plans to expand the program eventually to incorporate three Resident Companies simultaneously. Each residency will last for a period of three years; Clubbed Thumb begins its formal residency this Fall. Subsequent Resident Companies will be announced in the months prior to their residency commencing. “Playwrights Horizons can only continue to promote the most urgent, relevant new voices if New York’s smaller new play producers and incubators remain healthy,” says Adam Greenfield, Director of New Play Development at Playwrights Horizons. “We are proud to launch a program that we feel will strengthen our peer theaters and therefore the entire new plays ecosystem in which we all play a role. It was immediately clear to us that Clubbed Thumb should be the first Resident Company – there’s a significant overlap in our roster of writers and a shared impulse to produce bold, risk-taking new works, as evidenced by our joint efforts around SuperLab, the play development series we launched together five years ago.” “On behalf of Clubbed Thumb and our extended artistic community, we want to express our profound gratitude for this thoughtful and generous initiative,” adds Maria Striar. “In getting office and development space – and in the same place, which we’ve never experienced – we’re re-capturing time and focus and gaining stability and resources, all of which we’ll invest in our work and our artists. And what’s more, the potential for new collaborations and projects is boundless. We are giddy at the prospect of hatching them.” Clubbed Thumb will be in residence through Summer 2018 at Playwrights Horizons’ downtown location, 440 Lafayette Street. That space currently houses the Playwrights Horizons Theater School (PHTS, which is affiliated with NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, undergraduate Drama Program) and 440 Studios, Playwrights Horizons’ space rental operation that provides hundreds of companies with rehearsal, classroom, and performance space. Resident Companies will work closely with PHTS to engage its students in their work and their new play development processes. Clubbed Thumb will receive a total of four years in residence, one year longer than subsequent companies, in order to help Playwrights Horizons test and implement the new program. ABOUT PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS Playwrights Horizons is a writer’s theater 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 Tim Sanford and managing director Leslie Marcus, the theater company continues to encourage the new work of veteran writers while nurturing an emerging generation of theater artists. In its 44 years, Playwrights Horizons has presented the work of more than 400 writers and has received numerous awards and honors, including a special 2008 Drama Desk Award for “ongoing support to generations of theater artists and undiminished commitment to producing new work.” Notable productions include six Pulitzer Prize winners – Annie Baker’s The Flick (2013 Obie Award, 2013 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park (2012 Tony Award, Best Play), Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife (2004 Tony Award, Best Play), Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles (1989 Tony Award, Best Play), Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George – as well as Ms. Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation (three 2010 Obie Awards including Best New American Play); Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit (2013 Obie Award, Best New American Play); Samuel D. Hunter’s The Whale (2013 Lortel Award, Best Play); Kirsten Greenidge’s Milk Like Sugar (2012 Obie Award); Robert O’Hara’s Bootycandy; Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns, a post-electric play, Sarah Ruhl’s Stage Kiss and Dead Man’s Cell Phone; Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn; Dan LeFranc’s The Big Meal; Amy Herzog’s The Great God Pan and After the Revolution; Bathsheba Doran’s Kin; Adam Bock’s A Small Fire; Edward Albee’s Me, Myself & I; Melissa James Gibson’s This (2010 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist); Doug Wright, Scott Frankel and Michael Korie’s Grey Gardens (three 2007 Tony Awards); Craig Lucas’s Prayer For My Enemy and Small Tragedy (2004 Obie Award, Best American Play); Adam Rapp’s Kindness; Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation (2005 Obie Award for Playwriting); Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero; David Greenspan’s She Stoops to Comedy (2003 Obie Award); Kirsten Childs’s The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (2000 Obie Award); Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey’s James Joyce’s The Dead (2000 Tony Award, Best Book); Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s Assassins; William Finn’s March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland; Christopher Durang’s Betty’s Summer Vacation and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You; Richard Nelson’s Goodnight Children Everywhere; Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s Once on This Island; Jon Robin Baitz’s The Substance of Fire; Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room; A.R. Gurney’s Later Life; Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s Floyd Collins; and Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley’s Violet. The 2014/2015 Playwrights Horizons Season opened with the critically-acclaimed New York premiere of BOOTYCANDY, a new play written and directed by Obie Award winner Robert O’Hara. In his review of the production, Charles Isherwood of The New York Times called the theater company, “One of the city’s more adventurous incubators of daring playwriting.” The 2014/2015 Season continues with GRAND CONCOURSE, the just-opened world premiere of a new play by two-time Obie Award winner Heidi Schreck, directed by Kip Fagan; POCATELLO, the world premiere of a new play by Obie, Drama Desk and Lortel awards winner and 2014 MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grantee Samuel D. Hunter, directed by Davis McCallum, now in rehearsals; PLACEBO, the world premiere of a new play by Obie Award winner Melissa James Gibson, directed by Obie Award winner Daniel Aukin; IOWA, the world premiere of a new musical play by Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Commendation winner (2008) and finalist (2013) Jenny Schwartz, music and lyrics by Todd Almond, oratorio lyrics by Ms. Schwartz, directed by two-time Obie Award winner Ken Rus Schmoll; and conclude with THE QUALMS, the New York premiere of a new play by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Bruce Norris, directed by Tony Award and Obie Award winner Pam MacKinnon. www.PHnyc.org ABOUT CLUBBED THUMB Clubbed Thumb commissions, develops and produces funny, strange and provocative new plays by living American writers. Since its founding in 1996, the company has earned five Obie Awards and presented plays in every form of development, including over 90 full productions. Accolades awarded our alumni artists include the Pulitzer short-list, Tony, MacArthur, Steinberg, Kesselring, as well as numerous Susan Smith Blackburn, Guggenheim, Whiting and Obie awards. In 2010, Producing Artistic Director Maria Striar was honored at the inaugural Lilly Awards with the Margo Jones Award for Artistic Directorship, citing her efforts as a “fierce champion of new works and new writers… who has helped launch and/or develop the careers” of scores of playwrights, especially women. In 2013, Clubbed Thumb received its fifth Obie Award, this time the Ross Wetzsteon Award for sustained artistic excellence. www.ClubbedThumb.org

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