Tommy Smith Receives 2008 P73 Playwriting Fellowship

Page 73 Productions proudly announces that Tommy Smith is the recipient of the 2008 P73 Playwriting Fellowship.  A graduate of Julliard, as part of his fellowship year, Tommy Smith will work on his new comedy The Wife, a play about a Hasidic Jews that takes characters from wildly different socioeconomic backgrounds and jams them up against one other.  In addition, he'll be working on the libretto of a musical adaptation of Georges Bataille's The Story of the Eye.   Tommy will receive a cash prize and development support for these two projects.

Launched in 2003 and awarded each year to an early-career playwright who has not received wide public recognition or production opportunities in New York City, the P73 Playwriting Fellowship provides year-long development support to one early-career playwright annually.  In addition, the recipient of the P73 Playwriting Fellowship receives a cash prize.  Past recipients of the P73 Playwriting Fellowship are Kirsten Greenidge, Jason Grote, Quiara Alegría Hudes and Krista Knight.  Quiara Alegría Hudes's Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue, which was developed as part of the P73 Playwriting Fellowship in 2005 and produced by Page 73 in 2006, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for drama in 2007.  Jason Grote's 1001, which was developed in part with the support of the P73 Playwriting Fellowship and produced in 2006 by Page 73 under the direction of Ethan McSweeny, recently appeared on Time Out New York's "Top Ten Theater List for 2007".

Tommy Smith's plays include White Hot, Sextet, Air Conditioning, Sunrise, Demon Dreams and Caravan Man (with Gabriel Kahane). Tommy's work has been seen at The Flea Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival,The Ontological Theatre, 78th Street Theatre, The Huntington Theatre, ACT Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, among others. He is a two-time winner of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize for emerging writers (2005 and 2006). Tommy is also a graduate of The Juilliard School's Playwriting Program, and recently directed/co-conceived Reggie Watts' Disinformation at The Public Theatre's Under The Radar Festival.

Page 73 is a non-profit theater company that produces and develops the work of early-career playwrights who have yet to receive wide public acknowledgment or substantial production opportunities in New York City. Page 73's signature program is the P73 Playwriting Fellowship, an annual fellowship awarded to one early-career playwright each year wherein Page 73 acts as that writer's advocate and producer. The P73 Fellowship is made possible through the generous support of Joseph and Carson Gleberman, Joanne Jacobson and the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.

Tommy Smith