PONY Fellowship and Lark Play Development Center Welcome Samuel D. Hunter

After a successful inaugural year of the Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, the Lark Play Development Center is proud to welcome playwright Samuel D. Hunter as the 2008-09 PONY Fellow. On Thursday, October 2nd, Sam was officially welcomed at the PONY apartment during a housewarming event which included playwright Arthur Kopit, Lark staff and board, as well as donors and friends.  Hunter takes the place of the inaugural PONY Fellow, Carson Kreitzer.

As a PONY Fellow, Sam will live in the PONY apartment in the heart of the theatre district in midtown Manhattan for one year rent-free and will receive a $24,000 living stipend and artistic support from the Lark as a member of the prestigious Playwrights Workshop led by Arthur Kopit.  The unprecedented fellowship, the only one of its kind, seeks to free writers from the economic constraints typically felt by artists in New York City.

Hunter, currently at Juilliard, says, "It's been a constant struggle to make ends meet financially while finding time to write.  Playwriting, the reason I came to New York, has felt like a side project, something I turn to on nights on weekends."

The PONY fellowship is underwritten, in part, by Lark playwright and board member Sandi Goff Farkas, who conceived PONY, seeing the need for a deeper investment in emerging writers. "So many playwrights have to put their plays on the back burner, due to the harsh economics of being a playwright in New York.  Our community needs to rally around these writers in a significant way to make sure this generation of voices is heard," says Farkas.

Of her time as the 2007-08 PONY Fellow, Kreizter says, "To live in New York completely supported, not having to worry about overwhelming rent, with nothing to do but write—it's more than I ever dreamed possible."

Hunter says the PONY Fellowship "is completely overwhelming and humbling at the same time.  It's the greatest gift an artist can receive—the chance to work unencumbered by real world responsibilities.  I can't wait to see what my output will be when my main responsibility in life is to write plays."

For more information on the Playwrights of New York Fellowship (PONY), or the Lark Play Development Center, please visit: www.larktheatre.org.

Samuel D. Hunter is originally from Moscow, Idaho.  He received his BFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 2004, an MFA from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop in 2007, and is currently a playwright-in-residence at the Juilliard School.  His plays include: I AM MONTANA at the 2007 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the 2007 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, NORMAN ROCKWELL KILLED MY FATHER at the 2005 O'Neill Playwrights Conference, ABRAHAM (A SHOT IN THE HEAD) at Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater, ABRAHAM (I AM AN ISLAND) in Studio 42's Scattered Festival at Collective: Unconscious, PIGHEART in the 2007 Iowa New Play Festival, and his newest play, IDAHO / DEAD IDAHO, which received its first reading at Juilliard this Spring.  Sam has taught at the University of Iowa, Fordham University, and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories at Ashtar Theater (Ramallah) and Ayyam al-Masrah (Hebron).

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.