Huntington Theatre Co. Launches Initiative to Support New Playwrights

Boston's Huntington Theatre Company was recently profiled in the New York Times, where they said they wanted to strengthen their already solid relationship with new playwrights. Boston's largest theatre company already offers fellowships to playwrights and allows them opportunities for readings and feedback from audiences, but Artistic Director Peter Dubois said he wants to encourage new writers even more.

"The fact is, the artistic and business models of the regional theaters in the 20th century are over, given the costs of creating theater and the competition for people's time, so I needed to rethink our relationship with our home community," DuBois told the Times. "To thrive, we need a theater with work and audiences that look more like the city of Boston in terms of class, age, race, background. And you have to talk to people here to learn how to do that."

DuBois has made a point to meet with local emerging playwrights, such as Lydia R. Diamond, with whom he recently sat down to discuss her work. Diamond said that DuBois made her feel as though she was a priority at Huntington and that they wanted to encourage her work.

Diamond said, "That dinner empowered me to say which plays of mine I was most invested in seeing produced, hopefully by the Huntington, and now it's happening."

To read the full article from the New York Times, click here.

Founded in 1982 by Boston University, The Huntington Theatre Company is Boston's largest and most popular theatre company and one of the nation's most respected. In July 2008, Peter Dubois became the company's third artistic leader, succeeding Peter Altman (1982 - 2000) and Nicholas Martin (2000 - 2008). As Norma Jean Calderwood Artistic Director, he works in partnership with longtime Managing Director Michael Maso.

The Huntington is renowned for creating seven world-class productions each season for an audience of over 130,000. It brings the country's finest theatre artists to Boston, including Phylicia Rashad, Kate Burton, Nathan Lane, John C. Reilly, Victor Garber, AndRea Martin and Campbell Scott, to work with Boston's finest artists. With partner Boston University, the company has nurtured future stars such as Julianne Moore and Michael Chiklis. The Huntington has premiered plays by Pulitzer Prize, Academy Award, and Tony Award-winning luminaries such as August Wilson and Tom Stoppard, as well as rising local literary stars such as Melinda Lopez and Ronan Noone.

Since its founding, the Huntington's staff and resident artists have dedicated themselves to providing professional mentorship, training and experience to students in the Boston University School of Theatre, helping to mold the next generations of artists for the American theatre. In addition, over the past two decades the Huntington's nationally-recognized education programs have served more than 200,000 middle school and high school students in individual and group settings, and our community outreach programs bring theatre to the Deaf and blind communities, the elderly, and other underserved populations in the Greater Boston area.