Playwrights Horizons Announces Commissions of New Work by Dave Harris, Mia Chung & More

Playwrights Horizons has announced its most recent slate of commissioned artists, providing crucial support to today's most imaginative writers, and to the realization of works that will shape the future of the American theater. The organization identifies and engages several artists through this program each year, partnering with visionary foundations and individuals to champion these bold and exciting voices.

This roster includes the first-ever playwrights commissioned by Playwrights Horizons through the Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation. The inaugural Peter Schaffer Commissions are awarded to Phillip Howze, writer of Self Portraits and Frontieres Sans Frontieres, and Mara Nelson-Greenberg, writer of Do You Feel Anger?). Alan U. Schwartz, Trustee of the foundation, said, "The Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation is very proud to launch this partnership and very pleased to commission these two works chosen under the leadership and direction of Playwrights Horizons."

Other writers commissioned by Playwrights Horizons in 2021-22 include:

• Dave Harris (Playwrights: Tambo & Bones; Exception to the Rule) and Deborah Stein (Marginal Loss, The Wholehearted), through the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation/Mellon Foundation Commission;
• Sarah Mantell (Everything That Never Happened, The Good Guys), through the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Commission;
• Dylan Guerra (The Other Two, The Yaelmihkeinsploke) and Ianne Fields Stewart (A Dying Breed), through the Kate and Seymour Weingarten Commission;
• Madhuri Shekar (House of Joy, Queen), through the Broadway Licensing/Playwrights Horizons Co-Commission;
• Julia Izumi (upcoming at Playwrights: Regretfully, So the Birds Are; miku, and the gods), through the Jody Falco and Jeffrey Steinman Commissions for Emerging Playwrights;
• and Mia Chung (upcoming at Playwrights: Catch as Catch Can; Ball in the Air), with the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust Commission.

Playwrights Horizons Artistic Director Adam Greenfield says, "Our commissioning program speaks directly to our identity as an institution committed to playwrights-an organization that believes in providing them resources and support to hone their ability to show us our world in new ways. It is through commissions that we build enduring relationships with playwrights, on many occasions leading to, or happening in tandem with, productions of their work: as with Julia Izumi and Mia Chung, both of whose groundbreaking work feature in our 2022-23 season, or Dave Harris, whose brilliantly destabilizing Tambo & Bones was staged here earlier this year. We are thrilled to team with so many generous foundations to help playwrights bring eye-opening new work into existence."

About the Commissioned Playwrights

Mia Chung

Mia Chung's Catch as Catch Can premieres at Playwrights Horizons Fall 2022; Page 73 (NYC) world premiere. Additional plays: Ball in the Air (NAATCO/Public Theater 2022). Double Take (PH Almanac 2021). This Exquisite Corpse (multiple awards). You for Me for You (Royal Court, National Theatre Company of Korea, Woolly Mammoth, multiple regionals. Published: Bloomsbury Methuen.) Awards, commissions, residencies: Clubbed Thumb, Helen Merrill, Huntington Theatre, JAW/Portland Center Stage, Loewe Award in Music-Theatre, MTC/Sloan, NEA, NYTW, Playwrights' Center/Jerome, PH/Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust Commission, Playwrights Realm, South Coast Rep, SPACE/Ryder Farm, Stavis, TCG Global Connections, and London's Unicorn Theatre. Additional publications: Fifty Playwrights on Their Craft (Bloomsbury Methuen 2018); The Kilroys List: 99 Monologues by Female & Trans* Playwrights, Vol 1 (TCG 2016); and The Best Women's Stage Monologues of 2013 (Smith & Kraus). She is an alum of Ma-Yi Writers Lab and New Dramatists.

Dylan Guerra

Dylan Guerra is a queer, Latinx, New York City-based artist originally from Miami, Florida. He is a current member of EST/Youngblood, Ars Nova's Playgroup, and P73's Interstate-73. Dylan most recently wrote on HBO Max's The Other Two. He is currently developing a film with Picture Start & Get Lftd, and a television series with A24. His solo-show Find Him recurs at Ars Nova. He is also a 2022/2023 recipient of the Clifford Odets commission with the Lee Strasberg Institute, and an MTC Sloan commission. Some plays include: Big Frog, For a Brief Moment I was Something Else (HERE) & The Yaelmihkeinsploke (SMU; The Fled 2022) BFA: Southern Methodist University.

Dave Harris

Dave Harris is a poet and playwright from West Philly. Selected plays include Tambo & Bones (Playwrights Horizons, Center Theatre Group, 2022), Exception to the Rule (Roundabout Theatre Company, 2022), and Everybody Black (Humana Festival 2019). His first feature film, Summertime premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was released in 2021. Selected honors include: the 2019 Ollie Award, The Lorraine Hansberry Award and Mark Twain Award from The Kennedy Center, The International Commendation for The Bruntwood Prize, the 2018 Venturous Fellowship from The Lark, and a Cave Canem poetry fellowship amongst others. Dave is currently writing the feature adaptation of The Fortress of Solitude amongst several other feature and television projects. His first full-length collection of poetry, Patricide, was published by Button Poetry. Upcoming: Incendiary (Woolly Mammoth, 2023), Tambo & Bones (Royal Stratford East, UK, 2023).

Phillip Howze

Phillip Howze is a writer and theater maker whose works include Self Portraits (BRIC-Arts Media) and Frontieres Sans Frontieres (Bushwick Starr). His plays have been developed or produced at Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Clubbed Thumb, Cutting Ball, New York Theater Workshop, PRELUDE Festival, Public Theater/NYSF, San Francisco Playhouse, Signature Theatre, Theater Masters, and Yale Cabaret. A graduate of Yale School of Drama, he is a Fellow of the Sundance Theater Lab, a Lucas Artist Fellow at Montalvo Arts Center, a 2021 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, a MAP Fund grantee, and a Resident Writer at Lincoln Center Theater/LCT3. His commissions include the American Repertory Theater, the Manhattan Theatre Club/Sloan, and Lincoln Center Theater/LCT3. He was recently appointed the inaugural Associate Senior Lecturer in Playwriting at Harvard University's Theater, Dance & Media program. His new collection Rarities & Wonders: Plays is available from Tripwire Harlot Press.

Julia Izumi

Julia Izumi (she/her/hers) is a writer and performer who makes plays, musicals, and other theatrical nonsense. Her work has been developed and presented at Manhattan Theatre Club, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Bushwick Starr, WP Theater, The COOP, Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Seattle Rep, ArtsWest, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Williamstown Theatre Festival, NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights' Workshop, Barn Arts Collective, BMI's Librettists Workshop, CAATA's National Asian-American Theatre ConFest, and Rorschach Theatre. Honors for her work include O'Neill Finalist and Kilroys List Honorable Mention. She received the inaugural OPC Dr. Kerry English Award, KCACTF's Darrell Ayers Playwriting Award, Theater Masters' Visionary Playwright Award, NY Society Library's Emerging Women's Artist Grant and a Puffin Artists' Grant. She is a New Dramatists Resident and is under commission from True Love Productions, MTC/Sloan, Playwrights Horizons, and Seattle Rep 20x30. MFA: Brown University.

Mara Nelson-Greenberg

Mara Nelson-Greenberg's work has been developed at Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, SPACE on Ryder Farm, EST/Youngblood and ACT Theatre, among others. Her play Do You Feel Anger? premiered at the 2018 Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville and was produced at the Vineyard Theatre in 2019. She is a former member of Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theater and Clubbed Thumb's Early Career Writers Group. She received her MFA from UC-San Diego under Naomi Iizuka.

Sarah Mantell

Sarah Mantell's plays include Everything That Never Happened, The Good Guys, Tiny, and Fight Call. They have been produced and developed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Boston Court Pasadena, The Playwrights Realm, Artists Repertory Theatre, Juneteenth Theatre Justice Project, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, The Yale Cabaret, and Seattle Repertory Theatre. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Wildacres, Hedgebrook, and SPACE on Ryder Farm, as well as a Playwrights Realm Writing Fellowship, an Edgerton Foundation grant, a Toulmin grant, first runner-up for the Leah Ryan FEWW award, and two nominations for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award. Essays include "On the Loss of a Play and Things Worth Losing" on 3Views and "Touch the Wound, But Don't Live There" in American Theatre Magazine and. BFA Rhode Island School of Design. MFA Yale School of Drama.

Madhuri Shekar

Madhuri Shekar was born in California and grew up in India. She writes on themes of love, relationships and sexuality, inspired by her cross-cultural background. Madhuri's plays include House of Joy, Queen, A Nice Indian Boy, In Love and Warcraft, and Antigone presented by the Girls of St. Catherine's. Madhuri's audio drama for Audible, Evil Eye, won a 2020 Audie Award for Best Original Work, and her film adaptation (starring Sarita Chaudhury) is on Amazon Prime. She was a staff writer on HBO's The Nevers, wrote the screenplay for the upcoming Sister Act 3, and is staffed on a new Netflix project from DAVID BENIOFF & D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo. Madhuri recently graduated from the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at Julliard. She is a recipient of the Lanford Wilson Playwriting Award and the Steinberg Playwriting Award. She has an MFA in Dramatic Writing from USC.

Deborah Stein

Deborah Stein is a playwright, screenwriter, and director based in Los Angeles. Her play Marginal Loss premiered at The Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival in 2018. Other recent projects include The Wholehearted (world premiere at Center Theatre Group and La Jolla Playhouse) and Chimera (Under the Radar; Gate Theatre in London), both collaborations with Suli Holum. She is the director and co-creator, with Keith Wallace, of The Bitter Game, described by Ben Brantley in the New York Times as "a sharp reminder of the power of live theatre." Her writing has been published in Theatre Forum, Play: A Journal of Plays, and The Best American Poetry. A recipient of two Jerome Fellowships and a McKnight Advancement Grant from the Playwrights' Center, Deborah is a proud alumna of New Dramatists, the Playwrights' Union, and the LA Writers' Workshop. She currently teaches playwriting at UC San Diego.

Ianne Fields Stewart

Ianne Fields Stewart (she/her/they/them) is a black, queer, lesbian, and nonbinary transfeminine storyteller and activist. As an actor, singer and dancer, Ianne has worked consistently at NYC venues such as: Joe's Pub, Dixon Place, La Mama, and more. Film/TV credits: Dash & Lily (recurring guest star), The Bold Type (guest star), and Pose (recurring). Ianne played opposite Sara Ramirez in the 3-Time Emmy Nominated web series The Feels. As a writer, Ianne's play A Dying Breed has had several productions throughout the United States including a New York City run and her original spoken word work has been showcased at The Duplex and Joe's Pub. Ianne has several writing projects for stage and television in development. An activist with a national platform, Ianne was a US Fellows for Humanity in Action's John Lewis Fellowship recipient, founded The Okra Project, and co-organized 2020's Brooklyn Liberation: A Rally for Black Trans Lives.

About the Commission Funders

The Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation

The Sir Peter Shaffer Charitable Foundation was formed under the will of the late Sir Peter Shaffer for the purpose of encouraging and promoting the creation and production of works for the theater that are large in scope and content. Peter Shaffer was the accomplished playwright of Equus, first produced by The National Theatre, followed by the West End and Broadway; it received revivals in 2007 and 2019 and was made into a 1977 film which earned Peter an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay. Peter's play Amadeus opened at The National Theatre in 1979 and on Broadway in 1980, and the 1984 film won Peter Shaffer one of its eight Academy Awards. His other works include Lettice and Lovage (ran on the West End for three years), Black Comedy, White Lies, The Battle of Shrivings, Yonadab, The Salt Land, The Prodigal Father, Five Finger Exercise, The Royal Hunt of the Sun. In 1994, Peter was Visiting Professor of Contemporary Drama at St. Catherine's College, Oxford. He was awarded the CBE in 1987 and was knighted in 2001. Peter passed away in June 2016 at the age of 90.

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

The mission of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF) is to improve the quality of people's lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and child well-being, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke's properties. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation focuses its support to the performing arts on contemporary dance, jazz and theater artists, and the organizations that nurture, present and produce them.

The Mellon Foundation

The Mellon Foundation is the nation's largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.

The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation

The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation supports commissions of new works by female identifying playwrights, choreographers and composers. Our founder, Virginia B. Toulmin, was a passionate supporter of theater and the performing arts and of equality and fairness for women. The foundation has been in the forefront of supporting female playwrights, choreographers and composers and is the only foundation in the performing arts dedicated exclusively to advancing and leveling the playing field for female and nonbinary creative artists.

Kate and Seymour Weingarten

Kate and Seymour Weingarten have been supporters and fans of Playwrights Horizons from its earliest days.

Broadway Licensing

Broadway Licensing and its family of imprints: Playscripts, Dramatists Play Service and Broadway On Demand, act as full-service theatrical partners specializing in the development, production and worldwide distribution of new and established theatrical properties. Approaching the licensing and theatrical streaming universe with a wholly personal and producorial vision, the company partners with authors, agents and producers to harness the power derived from embracing the intersection of art and commerce, fulfilling Broadway's long-held promise of being the 'longest street in the world.' Make everyone a theatre person.

Jody Falco and Jeffrey Steinman

Jody Falco and Jeffrey Steinman have been subscribers at Playwrights Horizons since 1981. They support theater artists and companies throughout New York.

The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust

The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust was created in 1986 by Harold Steinberg to promote and advance American Theater as a vital part of our culture by supporting playwrights, encouraging the development and production of new work, and providing financial assistance to theater companies across the country. Since its inception, the Trust has awarded approximately $100 million to more than 125 not-for-profit theater organizations. The Steinberg Playwright awards - the "Mimi" awards - were first awarded in 2008 to honor artistic excellence and nurture its continuing development. Given in alternate years, these two awards, by far the most generous of their kind, acknowledge playwrights in two categories: the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award celebrates the recipient's entire body of work, and their exceptional, singular contribution to the American theater, while the Steinberg Playwright Award recognizes exceptional artistic potential in early and mid-career playwrights. The Trust has also collaborated with the American Theatre Critics Association to create and fund the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award.

About Playwrights Horizons

Playwrights Horizons is a writer's theater dedicated to the development of contemporary American Playwrights, and to the production of innovative new work. In a city rich with cultural offerings, Playwrights Horizons' 50-year-old mission is unique; the organization has distinguished itself by a steadfast commitment to centering and advancing the voice of the playwright. It's a mission that is always timely, and one that's necessary in the ongoing evolution of theater in this country.

Playwrights Horizons believes that playwrights are the great storytellers of our time, offering essential contributions to civic discourse and illuminating life's greatest paradoxes. And they believe in the singularity of a writer's voice, valuing the broad, eclectic spectrum and diversity of American writers. At Playwrights Horizons, writers are supported in every stage of their growth through their New Works Lab, POP Master Class series, Soundstage audio program, the Lighthouse Project, and Almanac, their digital magazine.

Playwrights Horizons presents a season of productions annually on their two stages, each of which is a world, American, or New York premiere. Much like Playwrights Horizons' work, their audience is risk-taking and adventurous; and the organization is committed to strengthening their engagement and feeding their curiosity through all of its programming, onsite and online.

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