NEW YORK CITY: Five New York-based playwrights have been chosen as this year’s Rita Goldberg Playwrights’ Workshop Fellows by the Lark Theater Company. The fellows meet often over the course of the year to work on new plays.
The five fellows are Rae Binstock, who received the David Ross Fetzer Foundation for Emerging Artists 2017 Theatre Grant for her play land of no mercy; Nick Gandiello, author of The Blameless, which received a production at the Old Globe subsequent to being developed through the Lark’s Playwrights’ Week program (2016); Lucas Hnath, author of Red Speedo (New York Theatre Workshop, 2017) and Tony-nominated play A Doll’s House, Part 2 (2017); C.A. Johnson, a 2016-17 Van Lier New Voices Fellow at the Lark whose play Thirst was included on the 2017 Kilroys’ List; and Susan Soon He Stanton, a staff writer for the London TV series Succession, on HBO, who received the Lark Venturous Playwright Fellowship for her play Today Is My Birthday.
“These writers each investigate shared and urgent questions about humanity, history, society, and identity with sincere curiosity and a joyful sense of play,” said Krista Williams, director of round tables and casting at the Lark, in a statement. “Together they make for a wickedly talented, rigorously thoughtful group who have risen to the challenge of tackling some of the most significant questions of our time.”
For 19 years, the Rita Goldberg Playwrights’ Workshop has served to present playwrights with a group of actors, directors, designers, and guests where they can work creatively. Led by dramatist and program creator Arthur Kopit, as well a group of rotating American playwrights, the workshop has graduated such alumni as Robert Askins (Hand to God), Katori Hall (The Mountaintop), Samuel D. Hunter (The Healing), Rajiv Joseph (Archduke), Lisa Kron (Fun Home), José Rivera (Marisol), Lucy Thurber (Transfers), and Lynn Nottage, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning play Sweat was developed during her time as a fellow in the workshop during the 2013-14 season.
The workshop is made possible by longtime Lark trustee Rita Goldberg, with additional support by the Axe-Houghton Foundation and the John Golden Fund.
The Lark, based in New York City, serves playwrights with funding, space collaborators, audiences, professional connections, and the freedom to design their new works.
