New York Theatre Workshop Names 2015-16 Season's 2050 Fellows

New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) has announced the playwrights and directors selected for the 2015/16 season 2050 Fellowship. The playwrights are Nathan Alan Davis, Hansol Jung and Patricia Ione Lloyd and the directors are Noelle Ghoussaini, Alexandru Mihail and Danya Taymor.

The 2050 Fellowship is named in celebration of the U.S. Census Bureau's projection that by the year 2050, there will be no single racial or ethnic majority in the United States. This projection provokes thoughts at New York Theatre Workshop about the transformations that will take place in the American landscape - 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 our 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.

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

Past 2050 Fellows have had their work produced and have directed throughout New York and the country. Recent credits of past Fellows include War at Yale Rep (written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz), An Octoroon at Soho Rep/TFANA and Gloria at The Vineyard (both written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins), The Mysteries at The Flea (directed by Ed Iskandar), Men on Boats at Clubbed Thumb (directed by Will Davis), Colossal at both Mixed Blood and Olney (directed by Will Davis, Helen Hayes Award), Little Children Dream of God at the Roundabout Underground (written by Jeff Augustin), Reverberation at Hartford Stage (written by Matthew Lopez), The Legend of Georgia McBride (written by Matthew Lopez, upcoming at MCC), Hand Foot Fizzle Face at JACK and Old Paper Houses at the Irondale (both directed by Tara Ahmadinejad), Ironbound at Steppenwolf (written by Martyna Majok).

Past Fellow Lileana Blain-Cruz can also be seen directing RED SPEEDO this spring at New York Theatre Workshop.

New York Theatre Workshop, now in its fourth decade 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, A Number and Love and Information; Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's Aftermath; Rick Elice's Peter and the Starcatcher; Enda Walsh's Once; and seven acclaimed productions directed by Ivo van Hove. NYTW's productions have received a Pulitzer Prize, seventeen Tony Awards and assorted Obie, Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards. www.nytw.org

The 2015/16 season at New York Theatre Workshop kicks off in September with the world premiere of FONDLY, COLLETTE RICHLAND, a new play by NYTW's Obie and Lortel award-winning company-in-residence Elevator Repair Service, written by Sibyl Kempson and directed by ERS Artistic Director John Collins. The world premiere of LAZARUS, by David Bowie and Enda Walsh (ONCE, Tony Award) inspired by the novel The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis, and directed by Ivo van Hove (Hedda Gabler, More Stately Mansions, Obie Awards) will begin performances in November of 2015. The New York premiere of RED SPEEDO, written by Lucas Hnath (The Christians) and directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz (Hollow Roots), will begin performances in February. The 2015/16 season will conclude with the world premiere of a new folk opera, HADESTOWN, by singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell. HADESTOWN was developed with and is directed by Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812), and will begin performances in May 2016.

A variety of membership packages are now available for the 2015/16 season at NYTW.org or by calling the NYTW Box Office at 212-460-5475.