LOS ANGELES and MIAMI: The Black List and Miami New Drama have announced that Matt Barbot will receive a $10,000 commission to work alongside the artistic team at Miami New Drama on the writing and development of a new play. The Miami New Drama x Black List Playwriting Commission, as it’s called, is the first of four commissions to be made in a partnership program the Black List announced earlier this year, in the screenwriting platform’s first foray into theatre.
For his commission, Barbot will work with Miami New Drama on a new play that reflects their mission to produce work as diverse, multicultural, and multilingual as their South Florida community. As the largest bilingual theatre company in America, Miami New Drama supports writers who understand, and are interested in exploring, the unique sensibilities of a city like Miami and its connection to the larger national conversation.
“We are incredibly thrilled to be working with the Black List and with Matt,” said Michel Hausmann, Miami New Drama’s artistic director, in a statement. “It is such an invaluable part of our mission to continue to help open doors for writers, and Matt is the perfect collaborator for the field we seek to help create. We cannot wait to see what the fruits of this collaboration bring.”
Added Black List founder Franklin Leonard in a statement, “Obviously, this is the first partnership the Black List has done in the theatre world, so it’s incredibly exciting to confirm the Black List’s ability to find great writers and connect them with opportunities that befit their talent here as well. I couldn’t be more excited to read what Matt writes for Miami New Drama, and you will find me there opening night of previews, whenever that happens.”
Miami New Drama selected Barbot on the strength of his play El Coquí Espectacular and the Bottle of Doom, which won the Kennedy Center’s Darrell Ayers Playwriting Award in 2017. The play centers on Alex, a comic artist who secretly worries he’s not Puerto Rican enough, and who has created a superhero that embodies everything he thinks it means to be Puerto Rican: El Coquí Espectacular. Barbot, a Nuyorican writer from Brooklyn, recently workshopped his new plays the beautiful land i seek (la linda tierra que busco yo) at Fault Line Theatre, and Trilogy, a commission for Two River Theater, both with director José Zayas. Barbot also wrote Spray Cap for Lynn Nottage and Miranda Haymon’s The Watering Hole at the Signature Theatre in New York.
The Miami New Drama x the Black List Playwriting Commission is one of four playwriting commissions launched by the Black List in January. The others announced were to be in partnership with the Movement Theater Company, Victory Gardens, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. The Black List has announced that they are extending the submission window for the Woolly Mammoth commissions through Apr. 2, 2023.
