NEW YORK CITY: Theater Breaking Through Barriers (TBTB) artistic director Nicholas Viselli has announced the relaunch of TBTB Writers’ Workshop, a program for affiliated artists to develop new work and facilitate exposure to a greater audience. The season-length program culminates in a public reading series to share the produced plays with the TBTB community, the larger theatre industry, and the general public. The full-length works are all inspired by TBTB’s mission to develop and expand the voices of disabled artists.

“New work has always been an important part of TBTB’s mission, and these projects are essential to the disabled community,” said TBTB artistic director Nicholas Viselli in a statement. “TBTB originally started the Writers’ Workshop in 2003 as a way to develop new work from within our ranks.  More importantly, we wanted to give writers a chance to develop work for disabled artists and to learn how to write about/for disabled artists. The workshops continued until 2008. Now, 13 years later, we are once again picking them up as a way to develop new work—and new voices.”

TBTB is the only professional Off-Broadway theatre company dedicated to advancing artists and developing audiences of people with disabilities, as well as striving to correct misconceptions surrounding disability by demonstrating that it does not affect the quality or integrity of art or artists. TBTB began in 1979 as Theater By the Blind; in 2008 the name became Theater Breaking Through Barriers, to include artists with all disabilities while retaining the “TBTB” acronym.

For more information about the TBTB Writers’ Workshop and any of Theater Breaking Through Barriers’ programs and upcoming productions, visit tbtb.org.