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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.

AnomalousCo

AnomalousCo is a predominantly queer/woman-led, feminist, transdisciplinary performance collective, generating both original and pre-scripted works at the intersection of drama, new media, circus arts, live music, installation and immersive performance. We are a theatre without borders: intercultural, international, and multilingual.

Amaterasu Za

Amaterasu Za features talented bi-lingual theater artists exploring classic and contemporary Japanese works for Japanese and English-speaking audiences. Through our productions and ongoing training in Japanese-influenced movement and theater techniques, Amaterasu Za hopes to foster a deeper understanding between cultures, and a deeper understanding for Japanese-Americans and Japanese living in the US of their own cultural heritage that is so under-represented and misunderstood in popular culture.

Black Revolutionary Theatre Workshop

BRTW exists to disrupt any and all oppressive systems that marginalize Black people using narrative and performance as a methodology to recenter Black people and experiences. With economic, social, educational, healthcare, housing, and political injustice facing our community, BRTW aims to tackle the issues that impact us while becoming a beacon for Black opportunity within the arts.

Brooklyn Youth Company

Brooklyn Youth Company (BYC) is a theatre-making program where students learn how to act, write, direct and produce original work. BYC is committed to engaging students in the cultural resources of NYC so field trips to Broadway plays, museums, NYC landmarks, etc. are included in each session.

Grand Pistachio

Grand Pistachio creates original theater for young people utilizing larger than life forms of puppetry, mask, and music. Our mission is to help young audiences build empathy, see resiliency in action, and provide context for how their own stories are connected to and shaped by history. We achieve these goals by highlighting the stories of people who may not be included in history books or cultural records. Through this lens we explore the hardships of immigrant families in Layer the Walls, untapped poetic potential within ourselves in Blown Away By Poetry, and dangers of sanitation workers in City of Trash.

Gung Ho Projects

Gung Ho Projects is a New York-based performance and education platform that creates opportunities for self-expression, empowerment, exchange, and understanding across linguistic and cultural divides. Our mission, like our work, transcends the boundaries of a single language or cultural perspective: Gung工合Ho Projects פרינגּש leaps 跨文化 into the 間 between cultures and languages, creating theater, film, and spaces for learning that שּפיל 遨遊 변화 تنوير変えるgozar to propel us forward, together.

Flying Leap Productions

Flying Leap Productions makes and produces thoughtful, participatory performances around complicated or difficult subject matter, for families to experience together. Our performances take place in the community, outside traditional theater spaces, and we make them in direct collaboration with our artists and our audience. With a core emphasis on accessibility and joy, our performances offer a foundation for discussion between children and their families.

Hit the Lights! Co.

Hit The Lights! Co. is a multi-disciplinary ensemble based in Astoria, Queens. Together, they devise hand-crafted stories and educational programming centering innovation, accessibility, and fun.

IRT Theater

IRT is a grassroots laboratory for independent theater and performance in New York City, providing space and support to a new generation of artists. IRT’s mission is to build a community of emerging and established artists by creating a home for the development and presentation of new work.

KPC – Keeping People Connected

KPC – Keeping People Connected is a multidisciplinary collective of Performing Artists who tell stories examining social injustices and stigmatized subject matter through dance, music, and conversation.

Kunqu Society, Inc.

Founded in 1988, Kunqu Society is dedicated to the study, promotion, and preservation of Kunqu, an elegant form of traditional Chinese theatre which is an intangible cultural heritage of humanity proclaimed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Based in Flushing, NY, and led by Chinese Americans and Chinese immigrants, the ultimate goal of Kunqu Society is to contribute to America’s multicultural heritage while bringing about a better appreciation of Kunqu.

Mass Transit Street Theater

Our mission is to promote racial equity, emotional literacy, and social justice using original plays, videos, workshops, residencies and interactive theater events. We are a 54 year old Bronx-based theater company known nationally for a dynamic mix of storytelling, spoken word, music and dance.

National Queer Theater

National Queer Theater is an innovative theater collective dedicated to celebrating the brilliance of generations of LGBTQ artists and providing a home for unheard storytellers and activists. By serving our elders, youth, and working professionals, NQT creates a more just future through radical and evocative theater experiences and free community classes.

Noor Theatre

Noor Theatre is an OBIE-winning company with a mission to support, develop, and produce the work of theatre artists of Middle Eastern and North African/South West Asian and North African (MENA/SWANA) descent.

Rooted Theater Company

Rooted Theater company engages, challenges, and inspires audiences through theatrical productions that range from the classics to new and emerging works; our programming encourages social consciousness through Real, Open, and Objective Theater Education. We celebrate the diversity of our community’s roots, our present struggles, and future successes through intentional theater.

Safe Harbors NYC

Safe Harbors focuses on the development and production of Native Theater and Performing Arts in New York City within the broader American theater; we combat stereotypes and support vibrant Native communities. We develop ongoing dialogue with Policymakers about the approach to cultural and socioeconomic issues using Theatrical performances, Performing Arts, Native Cultural Consultancy, panel discussions, and Cultural Events.

Spiderwoman Theater

Spiderwoman Theater’s mission is to inspire, nurture and challenge Indigenous and women theater artists and their communities to discover and explore their dreams and their futures through collective storytelling and performance through theater performance, training and cultural education rooted in an urban Indigenous performance practice.

The Sống Collective

The Sống Collective mission is to reclaim the Việt American narrative by creating development and performance opportunities for emerging artists of color. We do so by nurturing a community of artists whose work explores questions of identity, race, intersectionality, immigration, and the refugee experience without glorifying or exploiting the generational trauma of a diaspora tied to war.

Boundless Theatre Company

Boundless Theatre Company is a designer-led organization seeking to investigate, push and redefine the boundaries of theatrical storytelling.

Spearheaded by women, Latinx theatre-makers and other theatre-makers of color, we strive to nurture cross-cultural voices in our programming, producing aesthetically challenging and visually mesmerizing interpretations of new and existing work. In these ways, we foster a collaborative artistic landscape as richly and authentically diverse as our own communities.

Broken Box Mime Theater

Broken Box Mime Theater creates original, contemporary plays through movement to activate the imaginations of our audiences, contemporize the art of mime, and remind us all of the power of simple storytelling.

Caborca

Caborca is a bilingual ensemble making theater and film under the playwright/director Javier Antonio González at the intersection of Latine and experimental arts, where audiences are hungry for politically charged and innovative reflections on colonial power dynamics.

Colt Coeur

Colt Coeur is a 22-member ensemble of actors, designers, playwrights and directors creates original, story-driven theater, nurtures the next generation of artists by developing and producing new plays, and provides arts education and mentorship to students from under-resourced NYC public schools.

Conch Shell Productions

At Conch Shell Productions (CSP), our Queens, New York based organization’s mission is to infuse new Caribbean Diaspora and Caribbean voices into the American theater and film industry. We create a space to produce, present, and develop new plays and screenplays written by our community of artists. We believe that theater and film can and should have a lasting impact and provoke social change. 

Experimental Bitch 

Experimental Bitch (ExB) is a feminist producing company committed to creating, developing and producing badly-behaved, genre-defying performance by emerging TGNC, queer and women+ artists. We empower femme and queer artists across many mediums to be leaders of the creative process from development to production. Experimental because we embrace controversial questioning. Bitch because we are femme, queer, loud and proud!

General Mischief Dance Theatre

General Mischief Dance Theatre, a multi-disciplinary ensemble-based company, is dedicated to the power of joy and laughter in communicating ideas. They devise original projects that are invested in fully bridging the gap between the theatre community and the movement world.

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.

International Human Rights Art Festival

The International Human Rights Art Festival (“IHRAF”) offers an ongoing and expanding series of theater and music events, as well as workshops and classes and other creative outlets around New York City and the world, to open space for discussion around society’s most pressing concerns, as well as facilitate interactions among our diverse audience and community.

Jewish Plays Project

The Jewish Plays Project identifies, develops, and advocates for 21st Century Jewish theater through one-of-a-kind explorations of contemporary Jewish identity between audiences, artists, and patrons. Their process is Jewish Dramaturgy, bringing thought-leaders (clergy, scholars and lay leaders) into conversation with playwrights.

Jugando N Play

We are arts educators and theatre makers. We aspire to create multilingual and multicultural theatre experiences for young people that celebrate the diverse cultural and lingual communities of New York City and the United States.

Somos educadoras y teatristas. Aspiramos crear experiencias de teatro multilingües y multiculturales para jóvenes que celebran las diversas comunidades culturales y lingüísticas de la ciudad de Nueva York y los Estados Unidos.

Latinx Playwrights Circle

The Latinx Playwrights Circle is a national network of committed playwrights of Latinx heritage of all racial and class backgrounds. We aim to build a network of Latinx/é Playwrights nationwide in order to develop, promote and elevate their work; in order to make Latinx plays accessible to theater-makers looking to find the next generation of American Storytellers.

LubDub Theatre

LubDub Theatre Co is a physical theatre company whose mission is to animate stories of science, magic, and myth. Guided by our focus on these three sources of inspiration, we nurture new performance at the intersections of dance, music, new writing, and ritual.

NYLaughs

NYLaughs is a unique 501(c)3 performing arts non-profit that believes in the power of stand-up comedy to strengthen NY communities and enhance the quality of life for New Yorkers via free performances produced in NYC’s iconic public spaces. By creating opportunities for shared humor, we form a foundation for positive collective experiences that benefit our city while heightening the public’s appreciation for stand-up comedy, a distinctly NY cultural asset.

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.

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.

SheNYC Arts

SheNYC Arts supports and showcases the talents of writers, composers, producers, directors, and other theater artists who are part of a marginalized gender group, including cis women, trans, and non-binary people.

Our mission is to prove that there is no reason for male artists to have the overwhelming majority of professionally produced work on Broadway, off-Broadway, and around the country. We provide artists with the resources they need on their path to leadership roles in the industry.

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 Brick Theater

The Brick Theater, Inc. is a not-for-profit theater dedicated to nurturing the work of emerging artists at its performance space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in New York City. 

The Brick presents world premieres, monthly performance series, and seasonal festivals, expanding Brooklyn’s profile as a destination for cutting-edge art and entertainment. The Brick continues to seek new artists and projects, to provide them with a creative home, and to serve as North Brooklyn’s primary incubator of innovative performing arts.

The Exponential Festival

Founding Artistic Director Theresa Buchheister began Exponential to remove the barriers to entry for young artists producing their first shows in New York City. Exponential has presented the work of over 1.5K NYC-based artists to over 20K audience members in over 25 Brooklyn venues. Our artists present multi week runs, one-offs, and variety shows throughout the month of January in theaters, back rooms, basements, and box-stores.