Lark Announces 5th Annual PONY Fellow

After four successful years of the Playwrights of New York "PONY" Fellowship, the Lark Play Development Center is proud to announce that playwright A. Rey Pamatmat will be the 2011-12 PONY Fellow. In October 2011, he will succeed Tommy Smith (THE WIFE), as well past PONY fellows Katori Hall (THE MOUNTAINTOP), Samuel D. Hunter (A BRIGHT NEW BOISE), and Carson Kreitzer (BEHIND THE EYE).

As the 2011-12 PONY Fellow, Pamatmat will receive housing in the PONY apartment in the heart of the theater district in midtown Manhattan for one year, a $27,000 living stipend and artistic support from the Lark including participation in the prestigious Playwrights' Workshop led byArthur Kopit and advised by such playwrights as Tina Howe, David Henry Hwang,Theresa Rebeck, and Doug Wright.

With the PONY, the Lark Play Development Center has created one of the largest fellowships available to playwrights in the U.S.. Founded in 2007, the fellowship is underwritten, in part, by Lark playwright and board member Sandi Goff Farkas, who conceived PONY, as a bridge between the academic and professional worlds of playwriting. Because so many playwrights leave the profession due to the challenging economics of being a writer in New York City, Farkas sought to create a way to help with this transition.

About the Lark's new PONY fellow, Mr. Eisner remarks,"Rey is at that critical point in his career where he knows who he is as a writer and is ready to focus deeply on the themes that interest him most. The PONY comes at just the right time for him to invest in himself and rebalance his equation for living as an artist in New York."

Pamatmat is the 2010 Princess Grace Fellow for Playwriting. His play EDITH CAN SHOOT THINGS AND HIT THEM began its rolling world premiere at The Actors Theatre of Louisville's 2011 Humana Festival. On being awarded this fellowship, he says,"It's a miracle. I don't know how else to describe the effect it will have on my life as both a writer and a human. The honor of being chosen as the 2011 PONY Fellow will give me room to actually learn what it means to be a playwright."

Finalists for the fellowship were Peter Gil-Sheridan, Michael Lew, Mona Mansour, and Jackie Sibblies Drury. For more information about the Lark Play Development Center, please visit: www.larktheatre.org.

The Lark Play Development Center, now in its 17th year, is a laboratory for new voices and new ideas. The Lark brings together actors, directors, playwrights and the community to allow writers to learn about their own work by seeing and hearing it, and by receiving feedback from a dedicated and supportive community. The company reaches into untapped local populations and across international boundaries to seek out and embrace unheard voices and diverse perspectives, celebrating differences in language and worldviews. The Lark also plays a leading role in advancing unknown writers and their works to audiences through carefully stewarded partnerships with a host of theaters, universities, community-based organizations and NGOs, locally, nationally and globally. The Lark is led by its co-founder and Artistic Director John Clinton Eisner and Managing Director Michael Robertson.

A. Rey Pamatmat is the 2010 Princess Grace Fellow for Playwriting. His play EDITH CAN SHOOT THINGS AND HIT THEM began its rolling world premiere at The Actors Theatre of Louisville's 2011 Humana Festival before productions at New Theater, Actors' Express, Mu Performing Arts, and B Street. His full-length plays have been produced by Second Generation (THUNDER ABOVE, DEEPS BELOW) and the Vortex Theatre (DEVIANT), and his shorts have been produced by Actors Theatre (THIS IS HOW IT ENDS, AIN'T MEAT, and 1,260-MINUTE LIFE), Vampire Cowboys (RED ROVER), and HERE (HIGH/LIMBO/HIGH). His work has been developed at the O'Neill Playwrights Conference, The Public, Victory Gardens, Playwrights' Horizons, The Magic, Ars Nova, Ma- Yi, Rattlestick, E.S.T., The Lark, New Dramatists, NNPN, and the National Asian American Theater Conference. He has been commissioned by South Coast Repertory, Actors Theatre, E.S.T./Sloan, Mabou Mines, and Vampire Cowboys. Rey is a member of the Ma-Yi Writer's Lab, and has been a NYFA Playwriting Fellow, an artist-delegate to the first U.S. Social Forum, and a Truman Capote Literary Fellow. Other plays include: BEAUTIFUL DAY, NEW, PICTURE 24, and PURE. B.F.A.: NYU, Drama. M.F.A.: Yale School of Drama, Playwriting.