Theater Breaking Through Barriers Announces TBTB Writers' Workshop

Theater Breaking Through Barriers Artistic Director Nicholas Viselli today announced the re-launch of TBTB Writers' Workshop, a revised program for TBTB affiliated artists to develop new work (plays or screenplays) in a collaborative and supportive environment and facilitate that work's exposure to a greater audience.

Over the course of a season, each playwright develops a new full-length work inspired by TBTB's mission. The program culminates in a public reading series, where these new plays are shared with the TBTB community, the larger theater industry, and the general public.

Disability intersects with all populations in our world: Every age, race, gender and sexual orientation. TBTB strives to create a common ground for all voices and serve as an ambassador in the quest for full, systemic equality in our world.

"New work has always been an important part of TBTB's mission and these projects are essential to the disabled community. TBTB started the Writers' Workshop in 2003 as a way to develop new work from within our ranks. More importantly, we wanted to give writers a chance to develop work for disabled artists and to learn how to write about/for disabled artists. The workshops continued until 2008. Now, 13 years later, we are once again picking them up as a way to develop new work - and new voices. We are particularly interested in providing disabled writers a safe space to create. The recent Virtual Playmakers' Intensives were tremendous successes in showing us the diversity and depth our mission inspires with new work. I am excited to see what kind of new work our playwrights will come up with now," said TBTB Artistic Director Nicholas Viselli.

Theater Breaking Through Barriers (TBTB) is the only professional Off-Broadway theater company dedicated to advancing artists and developing audiences of people with disabilities and altering the misconceptions surrounding disability by proving that disability does not affect the quality or integrity of art or artists. TBTB began in 1979 as Theater By the Blind and is celebrating the 42nd Season! In 2008 the name became Theater Breaking Through Barriers, to include artists with all disabilities yet retaining the "TBTB" acronym and becoming the preeminent Off-Broadway theater for people with disabilities, hailed by The New York Times as "an extraordinary troupe designed to defy expectations" and The New York Post as "quite simply one of the most enjoyable companies in the country."

To learn more about TBTB, check out "Meet the Theatre: Theater Breaking Through Barriers" created by Theater Development Fund. The video is available at https://vimeo.com/338880820.

For more information about the TBTB Writers' Workshop and any of Theater Breaking Through Barriers' programs and upcoming productions, visit tbtb.org.