Second Stage Theater to Present The Next Stage Festival Supporting Early Career Playwrights

Second Stage Theater will present its first ever NEXT STAGE FESTIVAL, consisting of four distinct programs dedicated to supporting early career playwrights, which will take place this winter at Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater, 305 West 43rd street.

THE NEXT STAGE FESTIVAL formalizes Second Stage Theater’s artistic pipeline, providing support at crucial early moments in a playwright’s development - from writers with partial drafts to early career playwrights ready for their New York debuts.

“One of the most gratifying aspects of working with playwrights is watching them develop their unique voice – from initial drafts where characters and plot slowly come into focus to later rewrites where a play comes thrillingly – and fully – to life,” said Second Stage Theater Artistic Director and President Carole Rothman.  “Significantly, The Next Stage Festival will give early career playwrights a home at the Tony Kiser Theater, continuing the invaluable work we have done for years in our Uptown Series on our midtown mainstage.”

THE NEXT STAGE FESTIVAL will officially kick off on January 16th, 2024, with The Nancy Denovan Musical Reading, a one-night-only reading of the new musical, INSIDE VOICES, by Ross Golan, directed by Michael Mayer. The Nancy Denovan Musical Reading is funded by a grant from Christopher and David R. Murray.

The Festival’s centerpiece production will bring the model of Second Stage’s Uptown Series to its midtown home with the world premiere production of Kate Douglas’ play, THE APIARY, directed by Kate Whoriskey, running at the Tony Kiser Theater. THE APIARY will have a limited performance schedule, running from January 31st to February 25th, officially opening February 13th.

THE NEXT STAGE FESTIVAL will also include The Judith Champion Reading Series, featuring three new plays developed over a week of rehearsal with experienced directors, top-notch casts and targeted design support. Each play will receive a one-night-only presentation at the Tony Kiser Theater. The plays are D.A. Mindell’s ON THE EVOLUTIONARY FUNCTION OF SHAME, Sarah Mantell’s THE GOOD GUYS, and Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin’s TIGER BEAT.  The Judith Champion Reading Series is funded by a grant from the Judith Champion Charitable Fund and Mel Litoff.

Additionally, the invaluable work of the Lark Playwrights Workshop will continue under the auspices of Second Stage Theater – five playwrights will be mentored by established theater artists, including David Henry Hwang, Rajiv Joseph, and May Adrales.  The six private sessions that comprise this program occur every 2-3 weeks beginning Wednesday, January 17th and concluding on Tuesday, March 26th.

Casting for all events, as well as directors for the plays in the Judith Champion Reading Series, will be announced at a later date.

More detailed information on the plays and writers is below. All events will take place at Second Stage Theater’s Tony Kiser Theater (305 West 43rd street).

Second Stage Champion level donors and all subscribers receive early access to the Next Stage Festival. The Nancy Denovan Musical Reading and The Judith Champion Reading Series are complimentary, though seats must be reserved in advance. The Lark Playwrights Workshop is a private mentoring workshop and is not open to the public. Tickets to THE APIARY go on sale November 7.

THE NANCY DENOVAN MUSICAL READING

INSIDE VOICES – Tuesday, January 16

Music, lyrics, book by Ross Golan

Directed by Michael Mayer

In 1828 Germany, a 16-year-old boy mysteriously appears in Nuremberg’s town square. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. Is he a thief? Is he a freak? From societal outcast to the most famous prodigy in Europe, INSIDE VOICES tells the heart-pounding and epic tale of Kasper Hauser's controversial rise and harrowing fall. By multi-platinum singer-songwriter Ross Golan, INSIDE VOICES is a new Alt-Rock musical based on true events about the strength of survival, the power of love, the cost of fame, and the legacy we leave behind. 

Ross Golan is a multi-platinum songwriter, artist and composer. He studied music at the University of Southern California and has since released songs with many of the biggest artists in the world. He's written a number of Top 10 songs including 4 that reached #1. In 2016, he was awarded BMI Songwriter Of The Year. As an artist, his concept album The Wrong Man was released on Interscope Records in July 2019 and opened as a musical Off-Broadway in October 2019, garnering 9 Drama Desk nominations including Outstanding Musical. As an advocate, he coauthored the proposal to get songwriters added to the Album of the Year award at The Grammys. He has also been a leading voice in passing the Music Modernization Act alongside NSAI, SONA, NMPA and RIAA. He is now the first songwriter added to the NMPA board in its 106 year history.

Michael Mayer (Director). Currently Off-Broadway: revival Little Shop of Horrors. Broadway: revival of Funny Girl, starring Lea Michele. Other Broadway highlights: Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Spring Awakening, American Idiot (also co-author),Thoroughly Modern Millie, Side Man, A View from the Bridge, Everyday Rapture, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and Triumph of Love. National Tours: Angels in America, Millie, Spring Awakening, Idiot, Hedwig, Charlie Brown. London: a record-breaking West End run of Funny Girl and UK tour, Spring Awakening, Millie, Idiot, Side Man, Marnie at the ENO. Film: Single All the Way, The Seagull, Flicka, A Home at the End of the World.

THE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

THE APIARY – Wednesday, January 31 – Sunday, February 25

By Kate Douglas

Directed by Kate Whoriskey

Opening Night is February 13

22 years in the future, two lab assistants hatch a plan that could change the world. All they need are a few volunteers. A raucous and provocative world premiere by Kate Douglas about sacrifice, ambition, and honeybees, directed by Kate Whoriskey (Clyde's).

Kate Douglas is a writer, composer, performer, and horticulturist. Recent work includes The Apiary (Judith Royer Award); The Ninth Hour at The Met Cloisters (starring opposite her co-writer Shayfer James); Against Women & Music! with Grace McLean (The Civilians); and The Lucky Few (starring opposite her co-writer Todd Almond). She has been awarded residencies at SPACE on Ryder Farm, Swale House on Governors Island, New York Stage & Film, Rhinebeck Musicals, Millay Arts, Goodspeed Musicals, and the New Musicals Lab at Ferguson Center, among others. Alum of the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program, Colt Coeur, The Civilian R&D Group, GTG Speakers Corner, and The Orchard Project Greenhouse. Previous performance credits include Punchdrunk's Sleep No More (where she also held the title of Associate Artist), Fernando Rubio'sEverything by my side, Third Rail's The Grand Paradise, and Kansas City Choir Boy starring Todd Almond and Courtney Love. Upcoming: featured performer in Liz Phair's 30th Anniversary Tour of her seminal album Exile in Guyville. BFA: New York University. Certificate in Sustainable Garden Design, New York Botanical Garden. www.katedouglasprojects.com

Kate Whoriskey returns to Second Stage Theater, where she most recently directed Lynn Nottage’s Tony-nominated play,Clyde’s. Broadway credits include Sweat at Studio 54 and The Miracle Worker at Circle in the Square. Ms. Whoriskey’s additional Second Stage productions include Cardinal and How I Learned to Drive. Other Off Broadway:  All the Natalie Portmans (MTC), Songs for a New World (Encores Off Center), Ruined (MTC), Her Requiem (Lincoln Center), Aubergine, Fabulation and Inked Baby (Playwrights Horizons), The Piano Teacher (Vineyard), among others. Regional credits include productions at the Guthrie, the Goodman, the Geffen, South Coast Rep, Sundance Theatre Lab, Shakespeare Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, the Huntington, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Baltimore Center Stage, Arena among others.  Her opera direction has been seen at the Mannes Opera: Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, Chatelet in Paris and Teatro Municipal in Brazil. 

THE JUDITH CHAMPION READING SERIES

ON THE EVOLUTIONARY FUNCTION OF SHAME – Monday, February 26

By D.A. Mindell

In the beginning, God created Adam 1 and Eve 1. 

In the near-present, Adam 2 is a trans man, carrying a baby with his partner. Following a miscarriage, his twin sister, Eve 2, offers to perform his prenatal care through her neonatal genetics lab. When Adam 2 discovers the insidious nature of her research, their relationships and their beliefs are thrown into turmoil. 

D.A. Mindell (he/him) is a Manhattan-based playwright and educator, currently in the second year of his MFA at Columbia University. His work centers queer, transgender, and Jewish identity across genre and era. Most recently, he's been commissioned by Florida Atlantic University's Fair Play Initiative. Other recognition includes the 48th Annual Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Plays Festival, the 2021 Georgia Theatre Conference, and the 2022 Powerstories Voices of Truth Theatre Festival.

THE GOOD GUYS – Monday, March 4

By Sarah Mantell 

When Aarón joins a Connecticut group of Civil War reenactors, he is horrified to discover that visiting troops get to play as Union soldiers while he is forced to fight in Confederate uniform. When the unit’s leadership is usurped and gender, racial, and sexual identities come to light, the group must find a way to unite so they can finally fight as the North. A play about tents, spooning, queer romance, and the lengths we go to think of ourselves as the good guys. 

Sarah Mantell is the recipient of the 2023 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot. Their other plays include Everything That Never Happened, Tiny, and Fight Call. They have worked with Playwrights Horizons, Boston Court Pasadena, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Playwrights Realm, and Artists Repertory Theatre. Sarah has been awarded a Toulmin grant, Edgerton Foundation grant, and fellowships with MacDowell, Playwrights Realm, Sewanee, Yaddo, and SPACE on Ryder Farm.  MFA Yale School of Drama.  

TIGER BEAT – Monday, March 11

By Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin 

TIGER BEAT follows 2003 pop group Girls Next Door on their rise to teen stardom. As the band juggles choreography, awards shows, and crushes on teen heartthrobs, singer/songwriter Tess navigates her Asian American identity within the framework of the entertainment industry. A play with music and a coming-of-age story about pop stardom, questionable 2003 fashion choices, and finding one's place through art. 

Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin is a writer, educator, and new work advocate. Plays include Call Out Culture (2022 O'Neill NPC Finalist, 2019 Ars Nova’s ANTFest), High School Coven (2023 Strand Theatre production), and Harpers Ferry 2019 (2022 Know Theatre of Cincinnati production). They?ve received six Kennedy Center awards, developed work with Breaking the Binary, Yangtze Rep, EST/Sloan, Alliance Theater, Pipeline Theater Company, & Montana Repertory Theater. Kaela’s taught playwriting at Indiana University and Cornish; they currently work at the Tank. kaelameishinggarvin.com

ABOUT Second Stage Theater

Under the artistic direction of Carole Rothman, Second Stage Theater operates three New York City venues, exclusively dedicated to producing living American Playwrights.

Among Second Stage’s 180 productions are the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis; the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey; the 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegria Hudes; Mary Page Marlowe by Tracy Letts; The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown; Dogfight by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul and Peter Duchan; Dear Evan Hansen by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, and Steven Levenson; Clyde’s and By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage; Trust and Lonely, I’m Not by Paul Weitz; Grand Horizons by Bess Wohl; The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz; Everyday Rapture and Whorl Inside a Loop by Dick Scanlan and Sherie Rene Scott; Let Me Down Easy and Notes From the Field by Anna Deavere Smith; Becky Shaw by Gina Gionfriddo; Torch Song by Harvey Fierstein; Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl; The Little Dog Laughed by Douglas Carter Beane; Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin; Jitney by August Wilson; Crowns by Regina Taylor; Saturday Night by Stephen Sondheim; Afterbirth: Kathy & Mo’s Greatest Hits by Mo Gaffney and Kathy Najimy; This Is Our Youth by Kenneth Lonergan; Coastal Disturbances by Tina Howe; A Soldier’s Play by Charles Fuller; The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry; and Tiny Alice and Peter and Jerry by Edward Albee.

The company’s more than 170 citations include the 2022 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play for Take Me Out, as well as Best Featured Actor in a Play for Jesse Tyler Ferguson; six 2017 Tony Awards for Dear Evan Hansen (Best Musical; Best Lead Actor in a Musical, Ben Platt; Best Featured Actress in a Musical, Rachel Bay Jones; Best Book of a Musical; Best Original Score; Best Orchestrations); the 2009 Tony Awards for Best Lead Actress in a Musical (Alice Ripley, Next to Normal), Best Score (Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, Next to Normal), and Best Orchestrations (Tom Kitt and Michael Starobin, Next to Normal); the 2007 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play (Julie White, The Little Dog Laughed); the 2005 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical (Rachel Sheinkin, …Spelling Bee) and Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Dan Fogler, …Spelling Bee); the 2002 Tony Award for Best Director of a Play (Mary Zimmerman for Metamorphoses); the 2002 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work, 29 Obie Awards, 11 Outer Critics Circle Awards, four Clarence Derwent Awards, 20 Drama Desk Awards, 11 Theatre World Awards, one Dorothy Louden Award, 20 Lucille Lortel Awards, the Drama Critics Circle Award and 23 AUDELCO Awards.

In 1999, Second Stage Theater opened The Tony Kiser Theater, its state-of-the-art, 296-seat theater, designed by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. In 2002, Second Stage launched “Second Stage Theater Uptown” to showcase the work of up-and-coming artists at the 99-seat McGinn/Cazale Theater. The Theater supports artists through several programs that include residencies, fellowships and commissions, and engages students and community members through education and outreach programs.

In 2018, Second Stage began producing at its 581 seat Broadway home, The Hayes Theater. Originally named “The Little Theater” and built in 1912, the city landmark has been remodeled by David Rockwell of Rockwell Group.

For more information, please visit www.2ST.com or follow Second Stage on Twitter: @2STNYC, Instagram: @2stnyc and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2STNYC/

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