Allison Clarkson was a board member of New York Theatre Workshop, I think, from the beginning. She and Stephen Graham were friendly and had worked together on various projects. They had put together The Stephen Graham Foundation and then they changed the name to New York Theatre Workshop because they wanted it to be a nonprofit and they weren’t going to get very far as a nonprofit under the name of The Stephen Graham Foundation.

Once they did that, they realized that they were a board consisting of commercial producers and they needed someone to run the organization to make it coherent. So, Allison reached out and offered me this position.

She and Stephen met with me and offered me this job of Project Director and it took me not very long to realize that that also needed to be broadened. So, I went to Stephen and said, “I think you need this to be a theatre and I need to be the Artistic Director to be endowed with some kind of artistic authority. Is it okay with you if I call myself that?” He kind of laughed and said, “You can call yourself the Empress of India, if you want to,” but I didn’t. I resisted that temptation.

It started to cohere as a theatre at that point and not a random set of productions at the whim of the producer, board members, and their desire to commit and to put some new work onstage. It needed to have an artistic direction and, hence, I appointed myself that role.

What I’m proudest of and what I think of about those early days is that there was a sort of randomness in the very beginning, but when Tony Kushner came in as my Associate Artistic Director, he pressed me to come up with not just new plays, but what kinds of things we do. I think what we came up with was that the place had to have real theatricality and a creative mode of expression, but also the place had to have a conscience. There had to be a heartbeat inside that was somehow in touch with the realities of the world. So, that was where we aimed and that was crucially important to me.

There was some stumbling in the beginning, but I think once Tony came in, we really started to find that. I guess the other part of that is that when we came, The Director’s Project was sort of my baby. I got the idea from a guy named Jim Pescin who was a director from Yale who came in and said, “There’s no way for a new director to start working. Nobody’s going to hire somebody right out of graduate school or, much less, not having gone to graduate school.”

So, we decided to create this director-oriented program and, at first, in kind of a subtle way, changed the aura of things. It did a lot for the directors, obviously. It gave them a place to work, a way to be seen, and a collaboration with mentors and extremely talented designers et cetera, but it gave the theatre the opportunity to create relationships with directors at a very early stage in their career.

I think that has continued with Jim Nicola and his Usual Suspects idea that there is a community of artists. Michael Greif was one of our first new directors and, obviously, his connection to New York Theatre Workshop is legend. That was the idea and I think it took root during that time. And that’s what was of most interest to me and I think maybe the most important thing we did.

- Jean Passanante, Screenwriter (NYTW: Usual Suspect, First Artistic Director)

I came to NYTW in 1990, when the offices were on 42nd Street, and the theatre was on Perry Street. I started as the dramaturg for the Lisa Peterson-helmed production of Caryl Churchill’s Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, stayed on as the ASM for NYTW’s “O Solo Mio” Festival featuring Rocco Sisto, Jane Kaczmarek, Jeffrey Essmann, and Michael John LaChiusa, and then joined the Curators Group. We were invited to join the Usual Suspects when it launched with NYTW’s move to East 4th Street, and collaborated for over a year on the Pirandello Festival, Jim Nicola’s fabulous brainchild.

For 30 years, NYTW has been one of my most valued creative homes, and the Usual Suspect community has been central to my growth both as an artist and a New Yorker. In addition to attending mainstage productions, participating in gatherings in the 3rd floor rehearsal studio and festivals such as the wonderful “Just Add Water” Festival, I have developed and produced new work through innumerable retreats, readings, workshops, productions — including Hourglass Group’s Sex by Mae West and The Beebo Brinker Chronicles by Linda Chapman & Kate Moira Ryan — and fostered so many artistic collaborations and friendships that continue to this day.

Happy Big 4-0 and many thanks, NYTW!

- Elyse Singer, Producer, Director & Playwright [NYTW: Usual Suspect, Dramaturg of Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1991), Assistant Stage Manager of “O Solo Mio” Festival]

Before Rent, my first job directing in New York was at New York Theatre Workshop, 70 Scenes of Halloween. While I directed that production, I met many, many colleagues who still remain important to me and I felt like I was part of an artistic community for the first time.

I’ve also been inspired by New York Theatre Workshop as an audience member. I’ve been delighted, surprised, and dazzled by so many productions and by the innovative work of so many writers, directors, and actors, many of whom are being given their New York premieres.

- Michael Greif, Director (NYTW: Cavedweller, Bright Lights, Big City, Rent, & 70 Scenes of Halloween)

As someone in the early stages of my career in theatre, being a part of NYTW’s 2050 Admin Fellowship has allowed me to learn firsthand about so many aspects that go into making a professional production happen. One of the resources I’ve learned a lot from already has been NYTW’s program called Casebook.

Casebook is a class offered every year that takes an in-depth look at how one of NYTW’s productions is created. This year, the show we observed in Casebook was Sing Street, led by NYTW’s Alex Santiago-Jirau and Aaron Malkin. We explored the process of adapting the movie into a staged musical and heard from many people on the creative team, cast, and crew of NYTW’s Sing Street discuss their roles in the production. Discovering what was going on behind-the-scenes during the rehearsal process and listening to all these talented, knowledgeable artists was a really great opportunity to learn from.

We heard from sound designer Darron West about the complexity of the show’s sound due to the instruments being completely wireless. The music supervisor, Martin Lowe, explained to us how he incorporated music from the era into the first 30 minutes of the show, which didn’t actually exist before “Riddle of the Model”. During a tech rehearsal, director Rebecca Taichman asked the actors to try some new staging that didn’t end up working and she told us observing in the audience, “Don’t be afraid of your bad ideas!”

I’m sure Casebook is a different experience year-to-year, but I would recommend it to anyone who’s curious about how professional theatre is made. I’m not aware of many other theatres that offer a program like this and I’m very fortunate that it exists in my backyard. Lastly, for me, the icing on the cake to this whole experience was making new friends with people participating in the class who were just as excited as I was to see the inner workings of the theatre world.

- Uno Servida, Staff (NYTW: 2050 Administrative Fellow)

New York Theatre Workshop basically came and saved our butts at Elevator Repair Service. When we had lost a space that we were working in over in the East Village – further East Village, hah – being in-residence at NYTW meant that we had the opportunity to develop a show in our own room. That was huge for us and that was The Sound and the Fury back in 2008. I think we were billed as a resident company from about 2006 to about sometime around 2015. Our status may have changed before 2015, but the last show we did there was in 2015.

It’s hard to exactly articulate what the value is of being in-residence at a place like this, but there is a definite value to it. I mean, for us to be developing new work and when we do that– we’re working from scratch. We’re starting with nothing but a group of people. So, being there in-residence effectively expanded that group of people.

So, the more people, the more creative energy, the more enthusiasm and support there is around us, even just physically, just knowing that people were on the floor above us or the floor below us while we were working, has a tremendous effect. You feel supported, you feel encouraged, just walking by the office every day on the way to rehearsal or coming in the door to work in the Fourth Street Theatre. Again, it’s hard to quantify it, but it was absolutely something we all felt being here was that there were just having all these supportive warm bodies around us, above us, below us, outside the door makes a huge difference.

We were working on some dances upstairs in the third floor rehearsal space and I remember, every now and then, somebody coming just to make sure everything was okay because the ceiling was shaking in their offices on the second floor.

- John Collins, Director [NYTW: Usual Suspect, Director of Fondly, Collette Richland, The Select (The Sun Also Rises), & The Sound and the Fury]

My sense of theatre was so informed by NYTW in my late teens and early 20s, it definitely and directly contributed to making me the theatre-maker I am now.

I remember Caryl Churchill’s Far Away, in particular, left me sitting in the darkened house a changed young person and freshly inspired young playwright. A few years later when I had a reading for the first time up in the 4th Street rehearsal room, above the offices, I felt this intense, “OH MY GOD! I’VE MADE IT,” feeling some of us are, sometimes, occasionally lucky enough to feel, along with a sense that I was unduly honored to be there at all. I’m still overcome by both these sensations when I have the opportunity to work up there and it will probably always be so. The room is old, in the best way, and its history permeates its wooden floors and vaulted ceiling.

Anyway, I remember that first time– there’s this kitchen on the same floor, adjacent to and separate from the rehearsal room, its windows which face East 4th Street packed with houseplants, mostly succulents, most of which look like they’ve been growing there for 20+ years, because they have. I figured the Workshop, Jim [Nicola], and Dionysus wouldn’t mind if I took the teeniest, tiniest of clippings from one of the succulents, a little piece of the Workshop to keep growing at home, to remind me that theatre is worthwhile, and art is meaningful, and life is beautiful. And that, even if I’m having the worst day, or the worst stretch of years, I am lucky. More than 10 years later, the tiny clipping is now a much bigger plant, and it’s still growing.

- Jordan Seavey, Playwright (NYTW: Usual Suspect)

My most memorable experience is happily also my most durable one, which is the incredible, profound, deep, nourishing friendships that I have made with everybody that works at the organization.

I was shocked when I became an Emerging Artist Fellow, as it was then named, to discover just how quickly everyone in the building knew who I was, which I have never experienced since at a New York company or anywhere else I’ve worked at. I think it really speaks the profundity and commitment that New York Theatre Workshop brings to every single relationship it begins. It really cares, it wants you to be part of its community, and has a right to call you family.

- Ed Sylvanus Iskandar, Director (NYTW: Usual Suspect, Director of Sojourners & Her Portmanteau, Former Emerging Artist Fellow)

Jim [Nicola] hired me to translate this Pierre Corneille play. I had completely run out of money. Stephen Graham loaned me money to start writing Angels in America. It took a long time to write and I went through that loan in the course of about a year and a half. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to take a job because I needed all day long to work on the play. So, I was sitting at home and the phone rang and it was Jim saying, “Would you translate this old French play?” And I did it thinking, “Great,” because they paid me $750, which meant I could pay the rent for the next two months. Then, it was done after New York Theatre Workshop at Hartford Stage and it got a rave review in the New York Times and it was done all over the country and my money problems ended there.

So, that paid for the rest of the writing of Angels in America. When I had finished the first part of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, it was weird. It was three and a half hours long. I’d never heard it out loud. I knew there was at least another three hours to go. And I thought, “I don’t know what this is. I have to hear it.” So, I called Jim and I said, “Can I hear it?”

So, the first reading ever of the full script of Millennium Approaches was at New York Theatre Workshop and the minute the reading was done, Jim came up to me and said, “I know that other theatres already have a contractual connection to this, but I will do this immediately if you let me.” I’d only written one other play, but it was a different eagerness about Angels. The first person who ever expressed that to me and gave me a sense that maybe I was onto something was Jim.

So, I wanted to write a play about Afghanistan in 1997. I started working on it. I went to Jim and I said, “I’ve got this one weird hour-long monologue and a big, sloppy mess of play. Do you want to do something with it?” He said, “Absolutely.” So, he started letting me work on Homebody/Kabul.

We were ready to go into rehearsal on September 12th– I think that was our first day of rehearsal in 2001 when the Towers came down. We were about to go into rehearsal with a play about Afghanistan and it was a really tough time. The Workshop was still in a part of the Manhattan that you really couldn’t go into for the first couple of weeks after the Towers came down.

Jim never said, “Let’s not do it. It’s too controversial.” We went ahead and we produced it. So, the Workshop has just been absolutely integral part of my life. I never write anything or make any movie that feels complete until I’ve heard from Jim, what he thinks of it. As I said, many of the greatest experiences that I’ve had as a theatre-goer have been at New York Theatre Workshop and so I have a great, great, great love for the Workshop.

- Tony Kushner, Playwright (NYTW: Usual Suspect, Playwright of Slavs! & Homebody/Kabul)

I graduated from Julliard in ‘91? I’m not sure. I’m terrible at that. While I was at Julliard, I went a different direction from the majority of people in my class. I started seeing shows at New York Theatre Workshop and the Wooster Group. That’s what fed me. That’s when my creative compass began to form. I found my way to New York Theatre Workshop right when I graduated.

I remember coming to Jim Nicola, who I didn’t know. He had maybe seen me in a school production and I had this idea about Three Sisters [by Anton Chekhov]. I had this idea – and I was like a dog with a bone – and I talked to him about it. I got into his office– he let me come and talk to him and he thought it was a great idea. They gave me the rehearsal space upstairs and this was back before cellphones – this dates me – and I tracked down Cherry Jones’s phone number, I tracked down Andre Gregory’s phone number, I tracked down all these people, and I pitched them my idea; they all thought it was good. So, I remember the first time I worked [at NYTW] was a day in the rehearsal room working on this idea I had about Three Sisters and it was an extraordinary day. The production never happened. How could it? I was a kid, but it was an extraordinary day and an extraordinary experience to be empowered as a young actor to say my ideas are important and important enough to be given space at New York Theatre Workshop.

I remember him saying, “What do you want to do? What play do you want to do?” No director had asked me and I was a nobody. I’d done some plays in the park, I had done some downtown work, but I was not a celebrity. I was very interested in John Guare and John Guare had this play cycle, these Lydie Breeze plays, and I wanted to do those and Jim let me. We did them and that began my relationship with the Workshop and my relationship with Jim Nicola, who has been sort of my artistic godfather.

- Elizabeth Marvel, Actor (NYTW: Usual Suspect, Actor in The Little Foxes, Hedda Gabler, Alice in Bed, Lydie Breeze, Parts I & II, & A Streetcar Named Desire)

I have one of the very best anagrams in the history of New York Theatre Workshop. My full name, Douglas G. Wright, becomes Gilda S. Guthrow. So, Gilda Guthrow has long been my name at the Workshop and, even to this day when I see Jim [Nicola], he breaks into a smile and crows, “Gilda!” So, it sticks.

Then, some of us at the Workshop have thought about going into business because it would create such alluring names like Christopher Ashley is Shirley T. Asschopper. So, the idea of us opening a boutique and calling it “Guthrow & Asschopper” is just so appealing. So, Jim’s anagrams are pretty notorious.

I think the subversive sense of humor that Jim demonstrates in creating anagrams for so many of the staff and his friends and his colleagues at the Workshop speaks to the theatre’s larger cultivated taste as a theatre that is unafraid to make extravagant outlandish stylistic choices. In the same breath, a theatre that’s not afraid to (when it’s merited) laugh at itself.

As a kid growing up in Texas listening to the album of A Chorus Line over and over and over, I remember how I used to wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall in that fabled room where Michael Bennett was interviewing dancers for the very first time to create that musical. Well, years later, I was with the Workshop and I was away at a summer retreat at Dartmouth working on my play, Quills. 

This exuberant, gangly raven-haired composer sat in the middle of our circle and alternated between an electronic keyboard and a tape recorder to play songs from what he called a rock and roll adaptation of La Bohème and that was Jonathan Larson.

The first time I heard Rent, it was in that context. So, now in my dotage, I feel like I had my fly-on-the-wall moment in the sort of great and also the history of the American musical theatre and it’s thanks to the Workshop.

- Doug Wright, Playwright (NYTW: Usual Suspect, Board Member, Playwright of Quills)

I worked at and with the New York Theatre Workshop for a couple years on my musical, Hadestown. It’s a piece I had been working on previously, mainly in the music world, and had always wanted to further develop for the stage. Pretty early on in that process, I had met Rachel Chavkin, Jeremy [Blocker], Jim [Nicola], and Linda [Chapman] at the Workshop and started to get into the workshop scene.

We did the Dartmouth residency. We had two weeks up there with some beautiful artists, all of them out of their habitat. We were swimming in the river and singing ‘80s songs in the school bus on the way to the country store. I have some very deep, fond memories of that time and we did make a lot of strides towards taking the show towards what it wanted it to become. But it was another year and a half before the show actually went up at the Workshop in 2016.

- Anaïs Mitchell, Playwright & Composer (NYTW: Usual Suspect, Playwright & Composer of Hadestown)

Being part of the Usual Suspects is really great because you can see other people’s work. I love the way it’s handled because there’s a thing called Liz Lerman Method, which is opposed to someone saying to you, “That’s stupid, what you just wrote.” If you’re doing something in progress, what Linda [Chapman] puts into the mix using that method is, she’ll say, “Okay, what I would like to see, what are you trying to do with this aspect of it?”

So, the Usual Suspect thing is so great because you can sit amongst your peers and share work and get positive feedback. By positive, what I mean is even if someone doesn’t necessarily like what you’ve written or you feel that what you have written doesn’t work, it is said in a diplomatic way. I’ve been in situations where I’ve seen people get torn apart and literally no longer want to write– I’m serious. So, with that method and the way it’s implemented within the community of the Usual Suspects, it’s been fantastic to see that work and have it be handled that way as well.

- Dael Orlandersmith, Actor & Playwright (NYTW: Usual Suspect, Actor & Playwright of Forever, The Gimmick, & Monster)

My all-time favorite production that I worked on at NYTW was Far Away, the Caryl Churchill play directed by Stephen Daldry in the fall of 2002. Working with an extraordinary team – playwright, director, set designer, designers, stage manager and cast – could have been enough. But, the play’s third act in which 35 prisoners entered upstage while wearing Philip Treacy hats with their feet chained together was a shocking final tableau to this play’s Armageddon story.

In the first act, two actors, Marin Ireland and Chris Messina, sat at a workbench building hats – the finished versions to appear later in the third act on prisoners’ heads. The millinery construction had to be realistic, for which the show’s actual milliner was called into rehearsal. Stephen also required the construction to be loud, using tools like saws, hammers, drills, and hair dryers that were noisy – tools which weren’t used so much in millinery. The milliner and I had a task figuring all this out! I loved that Stephen wanted the loudest tools. I was so used to directors not wanting any ambient noise masking actors’ voices, so it was a treat auditioning drills, saws, and hair dryers for loudness!

In the third act, the play needed 35 volunteers to be prisoners. Jim [Nicola] and Lynn [Moffat] suggested that NYTW staff might participate as the prisoners. So, I signed up and joined the regulars, board members, and others. Secretly, I wanted to wear Treacy’s hats and found it an amazing experience (except for the clanging of chains) making our way from 4th Street, through the [Administrative Offices’] Gallery and up the backstage stairs before entering on stage.

- Tessa Dunning, Propsmaster (NYTW: Usual Suspect, Former Propsmaster)

The 2050 [Artistic] Fellowship was an experience that was really vital in terms of the beginning of my career in New York. The fellowship is basically where several artists, directors, and writers come together monthly and we talk about our processes, what we’re working on, and we share with each other our artistic projects that we’re working on.

So, the theatre really tries to bring together a diverse group of artists that can support each other, feed off each other’s work, and inspire each other. For myself, it was a great way to meet artists that inspired me to feel like I had a sense of place in New York City.

It was a place where I could authentically work on what I was working on and be in a process and be myself and not be afraid to fail– not be afraid to try things. Oftentimes, in a climate like New York where it’s really wonderful and there’s all kinds of things going on, everything is very high stakes in a certain way. So, oftentimes, you can feel pressured to produce amazing things all the time.

I felt like [the] 2050 [Artistic Fellowship] was an environment where I could be alright just coming as I am and being me and trying things. All of the conversations were very process-focused and I felt like I could be there and be a part of a process. To have a grounding like that as I was kind of beginning my career as a playwright in New York was really vital because it can be difficult to find places where you can have that sense of safety, but also that sense of rigor and ambition as well. It was a great combination of those things that made it a very fruitful process for me.

I was very fortunate that the Workshop did produce my play. Nat Turner and Jerusalem followed my fellowship and I certainly wasn’t expecting that to be the path and they never made it a thing where we were to expect the work we do in the fellowship would be produced on the stage. It happened to be that they were interested in the project as it came out.

- Nathan Alan Davis, Playwright (NYTW: Usual Suspect, Playwright of Nat Turner in Jerusalem, Former 2050 Artistic Fellow)

In May 2010, I started as the Education Intern at NYTW. In June, a new Artistic/Casting Intern showed up named Jacob Marx Rice. He was just (barely) cute enough for me to put up with him being such a brat. After nine years of life’s twists and turns, we got married on September 14, 2019!

- Katie Palmer, Staff (NYTW: House Manager, Teaching Artist, Former Education Intern)