The Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York and the Howard Gilman Foundation are thrilled to announce the 17 recipients of the New York City Small Theatres Fund for FY26 – FY27. Selected from an initial application pool of 182 applications, the funded theatres will receive two years of flexible, general operating support to support the operations of their theatre companies. We are proud to continue to be able to provide multi-year support to this vibrant and crucial segment of New York City’s cultural ecosystem.
The theatres funded through this year’s grant cycle represent a range of theatrical aesthetics, organizational structures, methods of working, and artistic communities from across all five boroughs. They include theatres led by a consensus based ensemble, companies working with very young audiences and others working to give community to elder playwrights , theatres creating work that provokes social change and protects vulnerable populations, organizations focused on creating space for new play development and companies consistently challenging what theatre is – and can be.
Alexandra Aron, the Producing Artistic Director of Remote Theater Project had this to say about the funding:
Receiving the STF was a significant milestone for RemoteTheater Project. Multi-year funding, whatever the amount, is a strong signal to the funding community that the organization will be around. For a small organization with ambitious programming – the STF is a real and important stepping stone.
Recipients of the 2026-2027 Small Theatres Fund
Actionplay
Actionplay is a theatre organization that improves the lives of autistic, neurodivergent and disabled individuals, their families, and the NYC community by making arts and cultural experiences more accessible and inclusive. We are dedicated to providing disabled artists with equal access to the theatre-making process.
Blackboard Plays
Blackboard Plays was founded with a mission to provide a home for Black playwrights in New York City, addressing the need for a space dedicated to developing new work by Black writers. Over the years, Blackboard has become a vital platform, offering emerging playwrights the opportunity to develop their voices and connect with the community through play readings, workshops, and open dialogue.
DreamStreet Theatre Company
DreamStreet Theatre Company provides education and inspiration for developmentally disabled individuals with a passion for the performing & creative arts. Our performances break down stereotypes & illustrate the profound effect art can have on life. DreamStreet supports adults living with developmental disabilities by providing them with a safe and welcoming artistic space that encourages growth and opportunity.
Hypokrit Theatre Company
The American entertainment industry has long generated minimal and monolithic representation of South Asian culture. In response, Arpita Mukherjee and Shubhra Prakash founded Hypokrit Theatre Company as a home for artists of color, especially South Asian artists, to develop nuanced stories. Hypokrit’s cornerstone priorities were then—and are now— artistic risk-taking, expansion across form, and relentless innovation.
Life Jacket Theatre Company
Life Jacket’s mission is to tell undertold stories – those that are currently or historically rejected, erased, or forgotten. We build every show using documentary materials including new as well as existing archival texts. We combine various disparate materials to create highly theatrical, visually inventive, and lyrically rich works to provoke radically empathetic social conversations about traditionally excluded communities – particularly outsiders, outcasts, and non-conformers.
Lightning Rod Special
Exploding complex questions with precision and play, Lightning Rod Special makes live performance from the ground up. Lightning Rod Special makes raucous and contemplative original theater works to ask questions of ourselves, our audience, and the world at large. Like scientists, we begin each project with pressing questions and through a process of artistic investigation find our way to complete pieces of theater that twist the ordinary into alien, provoke debate, and stir what lies dormant in the corners of an audience’s mind. With big hearts, we tackle lightning rod topics in ways that scramble theatrical conventions and intellectual assumptions.
New York Theatre Barn
New York Theatre Barn is an inclusive home for artists and a holistic incubator of original culture-shifting musicals. We amplify narratives of collectively underrepresented communities while creating space for artists to experiment in front of live audiences – often for the first time – and providing them with resources to build something innovative, intentional, and impactful.
One Whale’s Tale
One Whale’s Tale is a multidisciplinary production company that creates, fosters, and generates new independent work with an appreciation for magic and the preservation of culture. We create work that accurately reflects the experiences of immigrants, first-generation Americans, and people of color by creating space for them to tell their own stories. We are guided by Magical Urbanism, an aesthetic we’ve developed, which examines how the ancient traditions of our company members and collaborators exist within a modern urban landscape.
Radical Evolution Performance Collective
Radical Evolution (RadEv) is a multiethnic producing collective committed to creating artistic events that seek to understand the complexities of the mixed-identity existence in the 21st Century. We incorporate people from a variety of backgrounds into our creative process, with a focus on people of color, to seed the field of experimental and collaboratively created theatre with practitioners who celebrate the intersectionality of perspectives and aesthetics of the city around us. Through this approach, we work to assert a vision for cultural and social equity in our field, city, and nation.
Remote Theater Project
Remote Theater Project (RTP) develops and produces the work of artists whose voices are not often heard in the U.S. By focusing on and including international artists as well as U.S.-based artists from other countries, we invite both artists and audiences to engage in difficult questions about their perceptions of other groups. Our productions are human-to-human exchanges and culture-to-culture dialogues intended to promote empathy, especially between groups in political conflict.
Ring of Keys Coalition Inc.
Ring of Keys is an artist service organization that promotes and fosters community and visibility for musical theatre artists – onstage and off – who identify as queer women, transgender, and nonbinary artists. We strive to create a vibrant, diverse musical theatre landscape.
Spellbound Theatre
Spellbound Theatre is New York’s premier award-winning theater designed for very young children. Each of Spellbound’s productions is rooted in the rich tapestry of young children’s imaginations, utilizing story, puppetry, visual art, and physical theater to create unique, high-quality events for children ages 0 – 5.
The Drunkard’s Wife
The Drunkard’s Wife mission is to create and produce original experimental musical plays. We create site-specific theatrical environments guided by a generous, maximalist design sense. In our work, we want to engage audiences through shared social experiences, and create in these shared moments the spontaneous communities like the ones our work often represents.
The Gatekeepers Collective
The Gatekeepers Collective (TGC) uses an Afrocentric approach to support healing, self-determination, and self-actualization among its participants. Through a variety of public dialogues, visual art, and theater performance initiatives, TGC aims to empower the SGL community, increase its visibility, and educate others about the Black SGL/Queer experience.
The Hearth
The Hearth is a theater organization dedicated to supporting in equal part artists of underrepresented genders and emerging artists. We have a track record of launching theater makers’ careers by producing fully-funded, high caliber, multi-week productions of their work—a rare offering amongst organizations of our size. We also host countless developmental workshops; organize virtual and in-person retreats; commission playwrights to write new plays that we then develop; and maintain an open submission policy to welcome more artists into our field.
The Tent Theater Company
The Tent Theater Company nurtures, supports, and advocates for established Elder American playwrights and cross-disciplinary theater makers, fostering connections among them and promoting their artistry and wellness to the larger community.
WOW Café Theater
WOWCaféTheater is a New York City-based artist collective that develops and presents theater and performance works by artists who are women and/or transgender and/or non-binary.
Panelists for the 2026 – 2026 Small Theatres Fund:
Alana Canty-Samuel
General Manager, Lucille Lortel Theatre
Chris Dieman
Artistic Director, New Music Theatre Project
Carolina Đỗ
Playwright, Co-Founding Producing Artistic Leader of The Sống Collective, &
Associate Director for Community Engagement PlayCo
Jess Ducey
Board co-chair, National Queer Theater & Co-Director, Ring of Keys Coalition
Francesca Fernandez McKenzie
Community Engagement Manager, Ensemble Studio Theatre
Betsy King Militello
Executive Director, National Alliance for Musical Theatre
Becky Beary
Co-Founder, CO_LAB Theater Group
Board Member, A.R.T./New York
Jean Marie McKee
Artistic Director, Naked Angels
Nicole Martorana
Director of Programming, The Watermill Center
Toni Mello
Development Associate for AnomalousCo
Co-Founder of Fireside Theatre Collective
Julia Proctor
Founding Director, Clown Gym
Donny Repsher
Director, Major Gifts, BAM
Eric Shethar
Dramaturg & Producer
Claudia Zelevansky
Executive Director, Mercury Store
Rubén Cruz
Mieko Gavia
Charlene Jean
Ann Kreitman
Jonathan Mann
Cheyenne Myrie
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