New Works Series 2018

The 29th Street Playwrights Collective develops the voices of emerging, mature playwrights through weekly writing sessions, craft discussions and presentations. Our goal is to foster new work for the stage while supporting the needs of the playwright, committing to gender parity (serving 50% women), and providing opportunities for the public to attend workshop performances and provide feedback. Our over-arching artistic goals are to develop as playwrights by creating socially-engaged plays that speak to audiences today in ways that cultivate empathy and understanding across diverse peoples, and to bring people together in community, to educate and support people, to enlarge the audience for theatre, to keep theatre alive as a vital art-form that is necessary and valuable.

Plays presented in 2018: FUKT by Emma Goldman-Sherman; Glorious Disaster by Caroline Prugh; The Diamond Eater by Carrie Robbins; Embracing the Undertoad by Robin Rice; Leave Philadelphia, Never by Michael Wells-Oakes; Tom & Ted Go to the Races by Edgar Chisholm. Other 2018 Resident Playwrights include Melissa Bell, Maxine Kern, David Sard, and Suzanne Willett.

Since 2016, the New Works Series has built a track record of presenting the first public reading of new plays that have successfully transferred to larger professional venues, including Off-Broadway productions at the National Black Theatre in Harlem, Dixon Place, Theatre for the New City, Summit Rock in Central Park, and regionally at Golden Thread Theatre, Centerworks (Berkeley CA), DETC (Desert Ensemble), and garnered productions in Japan, Toronto, Sydney, New Zealand, South Korea. Plays and playwrights have attained award status as O’Neill Semi-finalists, Henley Rose Competition for Women Finalist, Unicorn Finalist, 2 Bechdel Festival Finalists, Women in the Arts & Media Coalition Collaboration Award Honored Finalist; and podcasts from Playing on Air, Parsnip Ship and Inkubator Lab, and have been published in numerous anthologies.

The 29th Street Playwrights Collective would like to thank our actors and directors and all our theatre collaborators, friends and supporters, and a special thanks to Emily Hewitt, our resident photographer for the many photos that grace our website. Mostly thanks to our audience, who attend our presentations, offer their feedback and feed our souls.

Photo by Emily Hewitt, FUKT by Emma Goldman-Sherman with Kelsea Feder, Karen Eleanor Wight, Andrea Goldman.