WorkShop Theater Company, the New York Innovative Theatre Award-winning and Drama Desk Award-nominated theater company focused on developing new work, has announced its 21st season, featuring Dana Leslie Goldstein's drama Daughters of the Sexual Revolution; Food, Glorious Food: a feast of new plays, a food-themed short play festival; and a new mission. Additionally, "the WorkShop" will present at least four developmental Plays-in-Process (PIP) productions (2 straight plays and 2 musicals), up to ten staged readings, and its regular Sunday@Six reading series.
Artistic Director Thomas Coté states, "I am excited and honored to be announcing our 21st Season, which will be brimming with our company's best and brightest talent. I am equally excited and honored to be assuming the role and responsibilities of Artistic Director at this exhilarating point in our company's history."
The production season commences Ms. Goldstein's Daughters of the Sexual Revolution, directed by
Susanna Frazer. The drama, set in the autumn of 1976, centers around three women: Joyce Horowitz, a complicated woman in a complicated marriage, her intellectually rebellious daughter Stacia, and Joyce's lover Judy, an unhappily married housewife. Ms. Frazer directed the WorkShop's highly successful musical adaptation of Life on the Mississippi on the Main Stage last season. Ms. Goldstein's previous productions at this theater include the family drama Next Year in Jerusalem and an early version of Liberty: a Monumental New Musical, now heading Off-Broadway. Daughters of the Sexual Revolution runs in the Main Stage Theater from September 18 thru October 11, 2014.
In the past, the company's one-act festivals have had small production budgets and short runs, but featuring plays that were subsequently published and produced. Food, Glorious Food will have a bigger budget and a longer run. Plays will be commissioned from WorkShop Theater Company playwrights and developed over the season, with the most successful plays being presented in the spring from April 2 thru 25, 2015.
The PIPs - small-budget, developmental productions of works-in-progress - will include
Mark Lowenstern's Parish Dunkeld, a morality tale set in a small Scottish town, from November 6 thru 15, 2014; A Christmas Carol: the Musical with book and lyrics by Mark Goldsmith and music by A.
Michael Tilford, from December 11 thru 21, 2014; and The Fairy Hoax, a musical inspired by the Cottingley Fairies scandal of 1917, book and lyrics by Tom Diggs and music by Jay D'Amico, from April 30 thru May 9, 2015. A fourth PIP production will be announced later in the season.
Additional programming for the season will include staged readings of Scott C. Sickles' Composure,
Timothy Scott Harris' Sterling Time, Laura Hirschberg's Verona Walls, Liz Amberly's Ripples, and Rich Orloff's Jennifer's Birth among several other plays throughout the season.
WorkShop Theater Company's new mission is "the rigorous development and production of new American plays and musicals that transport, challenge and surprise both artists and audiences." Previously, the Company's mission was broader and therefore more inclusive of classical theater and other pre-existing work.
The WorkShop has developed hundreds of plays, among them Eddie Antar's NY Times Critics' Pick, Drama Desk-nominated, and NY Innovative Theatre Award-winning hit The Navigator ("cruises in entertainingly high gear" - NY Times) and Ken Jaworowski's Interchange (NY Times Critics' Pick). Another WorkShop play,
Allan Knee's The Man Who Was Peter Pan, became the Academy Award-winning film Finding Neverland, which received Oscar nominations for its screenplay by David Magee and for producer Nellie Bellflower, both of whom are WorkShop Theater Company alumni.
