Blue Coyote Theater Group Announces New Grant Program For Playwrights

Blue Coyote Theater Group, celebrating ten years as a leading producer of downtown New York theater, announced today its commitment to new plays and emerging playwrights with the Coyote Commission Project, a multi-year grant program that promises to nurture the development of groundbreaking new works for future production.

The inaugural recipients of the Coyote Commission Project are: Robert Attenweiler (All Kinds of Shifty Villains at the Krain); Boo Killebrew (The Play About My Dad at 59E59 Theaters); Kristen Palmer (Departures at Blue Coyote); Christine Whitley (The Goatwoman of Corvis County at Shakespeare & Co); John Yearley (Another Girl at Naked Angels reading series); and David Zellnik (book writer and lyricist for Yank! at the York Theatre).

In a joint statement, Blue Coyote founding members Kyle Ancowitz, Robert Buckwalter, Gary Shrader and Stephen Speights said, "Theater artists are still reeling from the continuing effects of the economic crisis. As a leading producer of new playwrights downtown, we must make decisive efforts to protect unique dramatic voices from consolidations and cutbacks in arts funding, and ensure the arrival of tomorrow's classics. We are thrilled to be investing in the craftsmen who exhibit great promise in contributing positively to the American arts landscape."

Grant recipients were selected with consideration of the following criteria: their excellence in choice of subject matter; their finesse in actualizing their ideas; their willingness to follow their impulse to challenge and provoke the status quo; their respective singular voices; and their ability to express themselves with both humor and insight.

In addition to a monetary award, commissioned playwrights create one play for a possible world premiere production with Blue Coyote Theater Group. Blue Coyote supports the playwright through a developmental process that includes public readings and ongoing dramaturgical support.

The New York Times has praised Blue Coyote Theater Group for producing "sprawling, entertaining drama[s] with...large cast[s] in a time when most downtown plays are intimate, pinched affairs."

And Martin Denton, of nytheatre.com, writes, "Blue Coyote Theater Group is one of a very small number of companies that has earned my complete trust in guiding me to stimulating, challenging, and exciting new plays and playwrights. They are true champions of important new dramatic writing, providing platforms for excellent writers who not only have unique and commanding voices, but also have something worthwhile to say. I am very eager to experience the results of their latest endeavor, commissioning new work for the theatre."

The Coyote Commission Project is part of a series of Blue Coyote efforts initiated with the goal of illuminating the work of new playwrights in New York City. In conjunction with this project, Blue Coyote and Access Theater will host public readings of works in progress from additional playwrights at the Access Theater from March 30 through April 3rd. Blue Coyote plans to document the creative process on its Facebook page and newly designed interactive website, now under construction, at www.bluecoyote.org.