NYTW Accepting Applications For 2015-16 Playwriting, Directing Fellowship Program

New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) (Artistic Director James C. Nicola and Managing Director Jeremy Blocker) is currently accepting applications for the 2015/16 season of its 2050 Fellowship program for emerging playwrights and directors.

The United States is rapidly changing. The U.S. Census Bureau expects that by the year 2050, there will be 439 million Americans (there are 318 million of us now) and for the first time, there will be no single racial or ethnic majority. These projections provoke thoughts at New York Theatre Workshop about the transformations that will take place in the American landscape over the next 36 years-technologically, environmentally, demographically and artistically. They are a catalyst for broader questions about our moral and artistic future. How do we define diversity? Whose stories aren't being told? What lies ahead for our world? In response to these questions, NYTW has expanded and renamed its longstanding Fellowship program to support the diversity of voices and aesthetics that will make up this new minority majority.

The 2050 Fellows are emerging artists who, with their unique voices, give us perspective on the world in which we live; and who challenge us all to contend with this changing world. With the 2050 Fellowship, NYTW is re-affirming its responsibility to nurture artists who reflect this multiplicity of perspectives, challenge the dominant paradigm and give voice to those whose experiences are not often heard.

The 2050 Fellowship involves monthly fellowship meetings where fellows meet with each other and artists from the New York Theatre Workshop community to discuss craft, aesthetics and artistic development, as well as access to rehearsal space and two opportunities to share works-in-progress with the NYTW staff and entire fellowship cohort. Fellows receive mentorship from the NYTW staff and contemporary theatre artists and an invitation to participate in the artistic life of the theatre by attending staff meetings, developmental readings, dress rehearsals and other NYTW functions, including a 3-day weekend retreat in June 2015 and 2016. 2050 Fellows are awarded a modest stipend and an artistic development fund to support Fellowship projects, see work, research and travel.

NYTW encourage applicants with a unique cultural perspective inclusive of race, ethnicity, gender, class, disability and sexual orientation, and will accept up to six 2050 Fellows for the 2015/16 season, which begins in June 2015 and runs through June 2016. Candidates must live and be able to meet regularly in the New York City metro area for the duration of the Fellowship. Playwrights and directors are eligible to apply.

Interested applicants can apply online.

The 2014/15 Fellows are Tara Ahmadinejad, Elena Araoz, Jeff Augustin, Sanaz Ghajarrahimi, Martyna Majok and Brian Otaño. Past Fellows include Jade King Carroll, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Kareem Fahmy, Ed Sylvanus Iskandar, Pirronne Yousefzadeh, Catherine Yu, Simón Adinia Hanukai, Julián J. Mesri, Janine Nabers, Matthew Paul Olmos, Tamilla Woodard, Zhu Yi, Hilary Bettis, Lileana Blain-Cruz, Will Davis, Mashuq Deen, Reginald L. Douglas and Michel Hausmann.

New York Theatre Workshop, now in its 31st season of incubating important new works of theatre, continues to honor its mission to explore perspectives on our collective history and respond to the events and institutions that shape all our lives. Each season, from its home in New York's East Village, NYTW presents four new productions, over 80 readings and numerous workshop productions for over 45,000 audience members. NYTW supports artists in all stages of their careers by maintaining a series of workshop programs, including work-in-progress readings, summer residencies and artist fellowships. Over the last three decades, NYTW has developed and produced over 100 new, fully staged works, including Jonathan Larson's Rent; Tony Kushner's Slavs! and Homebody/Kabul; Doug Wright's Quills; Claudia Shear's Blown Sideways Through Life and Dirty Blonde; Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and Valhalla; Martha Clarke's Vienna: Lusthaus; Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest, Far Away and A Number; Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's Aftermath; and Rick Elice's Peter and the Starcatcher. Last season, the Workshop received critical acclaim for Caryl Churchill's newest play, Love and Information, as well as What's It All About? Bacharach Reimagined, which garnered Drama Desk, Lortel and Outer Critics Circle Award nominations, and NYTW's Tony-winning musical, Once, continues its Broadway run. NYTW's productions have received a Pulitzer Prize, seventeen Tony Awards and assorted Obie, Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards.

Currently playing at New York Theatre Workshop (79 E. 4th Street New York, NY 10003) is SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE, based on Ingmar Bergman's film of the same name with an English translation created for NYTW by Emily Mann and conceived and directed by Ivo van Hove. SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE officially opened on Monday, September 22, 2014 and runs for a limited engagement through Sunday, October 26, 2014.

NYTW's 2014/15 season will also include the New York premiere of THE INVISIBLE HAND, written by Ayad Akhtar and directed by Ken Rus Schmoll; the New York premiere of THE EVENTS, written by David Greig and directed by Ramin Gray; and the New York premiere of FOREVER, written and performed by Dael Orlandersmith and directed by Neel Keller. Tickets are available now at www.nytw.org.

2014/15 NEW YORK THEATRE WORKSHOP 2050 FELLOWS:

TARA AHMADINEJAD is a Brooklyn-based director, originally from Philadelphia. Her work has performed in theaters, galleries and hotel rooms in NYC, Philadelphia, Prague and Providence. She is artistic director of Piehole, with whom she continually re-investigates the process of collaboration and collective authorship. Their most recent piece, Old Paper Houses (based on poetry by Bernadette Mayer and research on the Transcendentalist utopian community Brook Farm) performed at The Connelly Theater in March. Tara's other recent projects include adaptations of The Cherry Orchard, A Man's a Man and The Fizzles, Jasper Johns' book of Beckett's prose-poems. With Piehole, she has received grants from Brooklyn Arts Exchange, the Mental Insight Foundation and Puppeteers of America. She has also served on the selection committee for the Puppeteers of America Endowment Fund. Tara recently assistant directed Jay Scheib's adaptation of Platonov, or The Disinherited at La Jolla Playhouse and The Kitchen, and is currently assisting Dan Rothenberg on Toshiki Okada's The Sonic Life of Giant Tortoises. Tara is completing her MFA in Directing at Columbia.

JEFF AUGUSTIN's play Cry Old Kingdom received its world premiere at the 2013 Humana Festival of New American Plays. His work has been developed at the Eugene O'Neill National Playwright's Conference (Little Children Dream of God); The Ground Floor at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (The Last Tiger in Haiti); American Conservatory Theater (in the crowding darkness); and Snapdragon in New York (The Imaginary Life of Millo St. Jean). Jeff is a two-time recipient of the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award. He is currently a MFA Playwriting Candidate at University of California, San Diego and graduated from Boston College with a BA in Theatre Arts.

ELENA ARAOZ directs theatre and opera. Recent productions include Mac Wellman's Wu World Woo and Horrocks and Toutatis too (Sleeping Weazel at ArtsEmerson); Architecture of Becoming by Kara Corthron, Sarah Gancher, Virginia Grise, Dipika Guha, Lauren Yee (Women's Project); Natalia Naman's Lawnpeople (Cherry Lane Mentor Project); La traviata (New York City Opera at BAM, original production by Sir Jonathan Miller); Lucia di Lammermoor (Opera North); Midsummer Night's Dream (Prague Shakespeare Festival); Carl Djerassi's Phallacy and Three on a Couch (Redshift Productions); Falstaff (Brooklyn Philharmonic at BAM); The Price (Northern Stage); Jaclyn Villano's The Company We Keep (Boston Playwrights') and Unanswered, We Ride (Last Frontier, after premiering at Edinburgh Fringe); Latin Lovers (Glimmerglass Opera); Li Tong's The Power (Beijing); Raquel Almazan's Café, War Music (which Araoz adapted from Christopher Logue, staging the bloodiest scenes from the Trojan War; FirstWorks Festival, New York Institute for the Humanities, Chicago Humanities Festival). New play workshops include Tiny People by Christopher Oscar Peña (Two River Theatre); River of Gruel by Sibyl Kempson (New Dramatists); Madame Ho by Eugenie Chan (Great Plains Theatre Conference); Hilary Bettis' plays Dakota Atoll (NYTW); Mexico (Project Y); and Alligator (Great Plains Theatre Conference). www.elenaaraoz.com

SANAZ GHAJARRAHIMI is a director, writer and choreographer. She is the Artistic Director of multidisciplinary company Built for Collapse (www.built4collapse.org), which TimeOut NY recently called "an ambitiously subversive young troupe." Recently she directed Drunkfish Oceanrant by Kristine Haruna Lee (Prelude Festival, Dixon Place), Red Wednesday at the Obie Award-winning Ice Factory Festival, Good Night World through Target Margin Theater, and Orestes 2.0 by Chuck Mee at Colorado State University while in residence as a guest artist. Before that she directed Nuclear Love Affair which played to sold out houses in NYC, Prague, Rome and Krakow. Current fascinations include the integration of media and film into live performance and working with playwrights on developing innovative play structures. She is a Drama League Director's Project Alum and has served as a guest director at New York University where she received her BFA.

MARTYNA MAJOK was born in Bytom, Poland, and aged in Jersey and Chicago. Her plays include Mouse in a Jar (Red Tape Theatre, The LIDA Project), the friendship of her thighs (developed at the claque, The Playwright and Director Center of Moscow, and The John F. Kennedy Center), Petty Harbour (finalist for the 2012 Princess Grace Award in Playwriting, Vassar/NYSAF's Powerhouse Festival), reWilding (One Coast Collaboration, Yale Cabaret, Satori Group), Woman at the Well (Downtown Urban Theatre Festival, NYC) and Ironbound (developed at Marin Theatre Company). Ironbound will be a part of First Look 2014 Repertory of New Work at Steppenwolf Theatre Company this summer. Martyna has been awarded The 2050 New York Theatre Workshop Fellowship, The Smith Prize for Political Playwriting, The Jane Chambers Student Feminist Playwriting Prize, The Merage Fellowship for the American Dream, The Olga and Paul Menn Award in Playwriting, a Ragdale residency, The Howard Stein Scholarship for Playwriting, commissions from Walkabout Theatre in Chicago and Apothecary Theatre Company in NYC, and publication by Smith & Kraus. Martyna studied at The University of Chicago and The Yale School of Drama. She has taught playwriting at Wesleyan, The New Haven Co-Op High School and New Jersey Repertory Company, in addition to assisting a class taught by mentor Paula Vogel at Yale. Proud member of Ensemble Studio Theatre's writer's group, Youngblood. Martyna was the 2012-13 NNPN playwright-in-residence at New Jersey Repertory Company. She will be developing Prypiat, a musical about modern day re-settlers to the area of Chernobyl, at New York Theatre Workshop this year. She lives in New York City.

BRIAN OTAÑO's plays include The Ocean at Your Door, What We Told the Neighbors, Between the Sandbar and the Shore and Zero Feet Away. His work has been developed and workshopped with New Dramatists, Ars Nova, LAByrinth Theater Company, Atlantic Theater Company, The Amoralists, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Pataphysics @ NACL, LARK Play Development Center, The Attic Theater Company, Atlantic Center for the Arts and Judson Memorial Church. Brian's numerous short plays have been performed at ArsNova, INTAR, Manhattan Theatre Source, Cakeshop and Theatre 3. Brian was a 2012-13 New Dramatists Van Lier Fellow. Brian is a proud member of Ars Nova's Playgroup and of Local USA 829. Education: BFA, Dramatic Writing (SUNY Purchase).