PONY Fellowship Awarded To Tommy Smith

After three successful years of the Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, the Lark PlayDevelopmentCenter is proud to announce that playwright Tommy Smith will be the 2010-11 PONY Fellow, one of the most unique artist fellowships in the country. He will succeed Katori Hall (Olivier Award, THE MOUNTAINTOP) in October 2010.

As the 2010-11 PONY Fellow, Smith will receive housing in the PONY apartment in the heart of the theatre district in midtown Manhattan for one year, a $27,000 living stipend and artistic support from the Lark as a member of the prestigious Playwrights Workshop led by Arthur Kopit and advised by such playwrights as Tina Howe, David Henry Hwang, and Theresa Rebeck.

Smith is a graduate of The Juilliard School's Playwriting Program, a recipient of the 2008 E.S.T. Sloan Grant, and was the 2008 Page73 Playwriting Fellow. On being awarded this fellowship, Smith says, "I'm astonished and for the first time in my life I can actually say that my breath was taken away when I heard. I'm excited to see how this fellowship will change the nature of my work in relation to the theatre community, and I look forward to exposing my plays to more ears and pushing the material to the limits of my creative powers."

For more information on the Playwrights of New York Fellowship (PONY), please visit: www.playwrightsofnewyork.org. For more information about the Lark Play DevelopmentCenter, please visit: www.larktheatre.org.

A laboratory for new voices and new ideas, the LARK PLAY DEVELOPMENT CENTER provides playwrights with indispensable resources to develop their work. 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 Producing Director, John Clinton Eisner and Managing Director, Michael Robertson. For more information, www.larktheatre.org.

Tommy Smith is a New York based playwright. His plays include SEXTET (upcoming, Washington Ensemble Theatre; Roger Benington, director), THE WIFE (upcoming, IRT Theater; May Adrales, director), WHITE HOT (produced at HERE Arts Center; May Adrales, director), PTSD (produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre; Billy Carden, director), THE BREAK-UP (produced at Flea Theater; Sherri Kronfeld, director), BEAUTIFUL NIGHT (commissioned by E.S.T.; Evan Cabnet, director), AIR CONDITIONING (selected for EuGene O'Neill Playwrights Conference; Steve Cosson, director), GOODNIGHT MECCA (produced at Williamstown Theatre Festival; Gabriel Kahane, composer & lyricist; Kip Fagan, director), among others. His work has also appeared at PS 122, Yale Cabaret, The Ontological Theatre, The Lark Play Development Center, A Contemporary Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, The Huntington Theatre; internationally, he has been produced in Prague, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Montreal and Athens.

He is a two-time winner of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize, a recipient of the E.S.T. Sloan Grant, a winner of the Page73 Productions Playwriting Fellowship and a member of the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writer's Group at Primary Stages. Publications include WHITE HOT in the 2008 New York Theatre Review and STREAK in "Laugh Lines: Short Comic Plays", printed by Vintage. He is a graduate of the playwriting program at The Juilliard School.

Tommy co-created (with Reggie Watts) the theatre piece DISINFORMATION, which played at the Under The Radar Theatre Festival at The Public Theatre, The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's Time-Based Art Festival, The Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), The Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh) and ICA (Boston). Tommy won the MAP Fund Award and Creative Capital Award for their follow-up show TRANSITION, which played at the PICA: TBA Festival, Under The Radar and On The Boards. Other collaborations include RADIO PLAY (Ars Nova, Redhouse, Bumbershoot, IRT Theater), OCCURRENCE (Galapagos, The Tank, Ars Nova, Portland's Leftbank, ICA) and DUTCH A/V (IRT Theater). Visit his website at: http://smithsmith.wordpress.com.