Theatre For A New Audience Founder Jeffrey Horowitz To Retire

Jeffrey Horowitz, Founder of Theatre for a New Audience, having led and grown the not-for-profit organization since 1979, will retire on August 31, 2025, at the end of TFANA's just-announced season of Shakespeare alongside plays by classical and contemporary playwrights:  Shakespeare's Henry IV parts i and ii (the 34th and 35th plays of Shakespeare's 38-play canon to be presented by TFANA) adapted by Dakin Matthews into a single play entitled Henry IV, world premieres by Ethan Lipton and Taylor Mac, and an American premiere of a modern classic by Wole Soyinka.    

Horowitz observed, “Some of what I got to do at Theatre for a New Audience was build an artistic home and support, risk, produce, provoke, entertain, explore, educate, illuminate, reach, challenge the status quo and inquire. It's been forty-five curious and extraordinary years. Others now should have the opportunity to shape the next era of TFANA's development.”   

TFANA Board Chair Robert E. Buckholz commented, “Jeffrey has been doing fantastic work for many years, creating and then building TFANA into a wonderful and vibrant platform for theatre artists of all stripes. The exciting new season just announced is the latest step on this truly great path.”

 

After training as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), Horowitz moved to New York and performed on and Off Broadway in plays by Arnold Wesker and Wallace Shawn. There were, of course, very few opportunities in the U.S. to be a member of a classical company such as the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), described by its founder Peter Hall as “not only highly trained in Shakespeare and the speaking of his verse but also in modern drama—open to the present as well as expert in the past,” a point of view that Horowitz took to heart. But what Horowitz mostly encountered were what the critic Alastair Macaulay described as superstitions, saying “Many Americans and many Britons believe that British actors performed Shakespeare better than Americans. Many Americans also believe that most Britons believe that Americans simply can't act Shakespeare. And many Britons do indeed believe that Shakespeare should be performed in British accents.”

 

In response to these biases, when he was injured in an accidental fire in his apartment, Horowitz decided to found Theatre for a New Audience with $50,000 won in a lawsuit. As he described when he accepted the Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019, founding the company in 1979 was “one of the best decisions [he] ever made.”

 

Horowitz's vison for TFANA was to build a modern classical theatre in New York dedicated to the language and ideas of authors. The house playwright would be Shakespeare, produced alongside classic and contemporary dramatists. There was no one correct way to do these plays, and the productions would be seen by everyone. It would be an artistic home where TFANA would nurture long-term associations with artists and support their development regardless of critical reception. Civic programs would support education and the humanities, help build future audiences and promote affordable tickets.

 

Seventeen years later, TFANA had an annual budget of $2 million. Horowitz worked closely with TFANA Chair Theodore C.  Rogers and the organization's Board to launch a capital campaign to fund a permanent home.  It took another 17 years. On October 22, 2013, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg cut a ribbon to officially inaugurate Theatre for a New Audience's first permanent home.

 

Built in partnership with The City of New York on a City-owned former parking lot and designed by Hugh Hardy and H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture, it was the first classical theatre built in New York City since the Vivian Beaumont at Lincoln Center in 1965. The building is named Polonsky Shakespeare Center in recognition of a $10 million gift from The Polonsky Foundation. The City of New York, through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President, contributed $34.4 million, which was critical in helping TFANA raise a matching $34.4 million.

 

At the heart of PSC is the 299-seat Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage, named in recognition of a $5 million gift from the SHS Foundation. The Scripps supports diversity of programming as the stage and audience can be arranged in nine different configurations. Immediately behind the Scripps is the 50-seat Theodore C. Rogers Studio, named in honor of a $2.5 million gift from Rogers.

 

Another major effort by Horowitz was developing artistic relationships between TFANA and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Horowitz first invited Cicely Berry, the RSC's legendary director of voice, to lead Shakespeare workshops at TFANA for actors and directors. In 2001, TFANA became the first American theatre company invited to bring a production of Shakespeare to the RSC, with Bartlett Sher's staging of Cymbeline. In 2007, the RSC asked TFANA to return as part of the Complete Works Festival with The Merchant of Venice, staring F. Murray Abraham as Shylock and directed by Darko Tresnjak.  

 

In 2014, Michael Boyd, former artistic director, RSC, adapted and directed Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great starring John Douglas Thompson at TFANA. John Douglas Thompson comments, “Under Jeffrey Horowitz's leadership, TFANA has proved an essential artistic home for me. Jeffrey hired me when I couldn't find acting work and offered me guidance, counsel, and most importantly my shot at some of the great iconic roles of the classical canon. From Shakespeare to Marlowe to Ibsen, our artistic collaboration has been an almost two-decade journey, forging me a career, and allowing me to dance on the edge of my craft.”  

 

This season, TFANA and Horowitz will build a new relationship with another UK theatre. TFANA will tour its production of The Merchant of Venice, staged by TFANA resident director Arin Arbus and starring John Douglas Thompson, to Scotland as part of the Shakespeare Exchange with the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh. Thompson will be the first Black actor to play Shylock in a major Edinburgh theatre in a full production of The Merchant of Venice. UK audiences will experience two exceptional theatre artists whose careers have long been supported by TFANA making their Edinburgh debuts. 

 

Prior to reprising Shylock at the Lyceum, Thompson will play Othello opposite Juliet Rylance as Desdemona in a production by the Royal Shakespeare Company directed by Tim Carroll. Thompson and Rylance first played Othello and Desdemona opposite each other in TFANA's 2009 award-winning production of Othello directed by Arin Arbus. TFANA is thrilled that both extraordinary artists will again interpret these roles in a completely new production at the RSC, October 11- November 23.

Playwright Richard Nelson observes, “TFANA holds to the belief that new plays and old plays must go hand in hand. The one needs the other to grow. Without classics new plays are out of context, out of any sense of tradition; that is, out of history. And without new plays alongside, the classics are lost to the past, instead of being in conversation with today.” 

Horowitz has programmed Shakespeare produced alongside classics by authors such as Euripides, Ford, Gilbert, Ibsen, Molière, Marlowe, Strindberg and Lope De Vega; contemporary playwrights such as David Greig, Harley Granville-Barker, Samuel Beckett, Edward Bond, Alice Childress, Maria Irene Fornés, Eugene Ionesco, Denis Johnson, and Tennessee Williams; and new plays by authors such as Shayok Misha Chowdhury, Annie Dorsen, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Will Eno, Branden Jacobs Jenkins, Richard Maxwell, Suzan-Lori Parks, Richard Nelson, and Wallace Shawn.   

 

By producing new plays alongside classics, Horowitz and TFANA bring attention to contemporary authors. In 2007, TFANA produced the Off-Broadway premiere of Adrienne Kennedy's Ohio State Murders at The Duke on 42nd Street. In 2022, Ohio State Murders premiered on Broadway.   Kennedy wrote, “Jeffrey. All. The work. Devotion. Attention. You gave. To. Ohio. State. Murders. Made. This all. Possible. That attention on Times Square. People. Took. Notice Of. Play and helped build it.”    

 

In 2023, the Library of America (L.O.A.) published Adrienne Kennedy: The Collected Plays & Other Writings.  Until Kennedy, only four other playwrights at the L.O.A. had this honor: Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, and Tennessee Williams. Again, Kennedy wrote Horowitz:  “As we all. Know. Sometimes it. Takes. A long.  Time for. Things. To sink. In. But.  Do. Want. You to know It. Is. So. Clear. To. Me. That. Your Productions. Of my. Plays. play. A gigantic. Part. In. The. Attention. My work. Is getting.”

 

For TFANA's productions, Horowitz supported directors with distinctive voices including JoAnne Akalaitis, Arin Arbus, Sarah Benson, Michael Boyd, Peter Brook, Lileana Blain-Cruz, Selina Cartmell, Karin Coonrod, Ron Daniels, Simon Godwin, Peter Hall, Marie-Hélène Estienne, David Herskovits, Barry Kyle, Trevor Nunn, Erica Schmidt, Bartlett Sher, Julie Taymor, Awoye Timpo, Darko Tresnjak, Robert Woodruff, and Evan Yionoulis. And actors, such as David Barlow, Tina Benko, Brittany Bradford, Arnie Burton, Norbert Leo Butz, Jonathan Cake, Christian Camargo, Bill Camp, Juliana Canfield, Reg E. Cathey, Randy Danson, Ned Eisenberg, Lilly Englert, Kate Forbes, Andy Grotelueschen, Lisa Gay Hamilton, David Harewood, Jake Horowitz, Kathryn Hunter, Chukwudi Iwuji, Merritt Janson, Patrice Johnson, Maggie Lacey, Paul Lazar, Harry Lennix, Kecia Lewis, Marcello Magni, Elizabeth Marvel, Jefferson Mays, Jacob Ming-Trent, Alfredo Narciso, Tom Nellis, Kristine Nielsen, Tom Pecinka, Mary Beth Peil, Michael Pennington, Linda Powell, Cara Ricketts, Stephanie Roth Haberle, Amy Ryan, Thomas Jay Ryan, Michael Rogers, Mark Rylance, Thomas Sadoski, Jay O. Sanders, Maggie Siff, Michael Shannon, Steven Skybell, Derek Smith, Paul Sparks, Robert Stattel, David Strathairn, John Turturro, Andy Weems,  and Dianne Wiest.

 

Julie Taymor offers, “It was Jeffrey Horowitz who first lured me into directing Shakespeare.  It wasn't that I didn't love the Bard's work, but Jeffrey helped me get beyond the intimidating prospect of all those words. He opened the door. He was a wonderful producer, encouraging experimentation, supporting collaboration with artists far and wide and raising funds for the ideas and artists he believed in. His excitement was pivotal to my enjoyment of the process. We did The Tempest twice, The Taming of The Shrew, Titus Andronicus, and the opening production of the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Three of these productions were subsequently made into feature films with such actors as Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Harry Lennix, Alan Cummings, Helen Mirren, Alfred Molina and Kathryn Hunter to name a few. We also did Carlo Gozzi's commedia dell'arte, The Green Bird, opening at the renovated New Victory Theater on 42nd Street as part of its inaugural season, then at La Jolla Playhouse and finally on Broadway.  It has been the honor of a lifetime to have been produced by Theatre for a New Audience under the superb leadership of Jeffrey Horowitz.”    

 

Back in 2019, Horowitz concluded his Obie speech, noting that “A flash point is the lowest temperature at which a volatile chemical can explode from a spark…[A] flash point paradoxically created the seed money to start Theatre for a New Audience which has been endeavoring to create theatrical flash points — where ingredients of different artists from different times and cultures mix together, combust and radiate life. And mysteriously, the Polonsky Shakespeare Center is built on Ashland Place. Ash land — the land of ash.”   

 

TFANA's Board is deeply committed to carrying forward and building on the great legacy Jeffrey has created over his long and very successful career. To support the search process, a board-authorized Search Committee has retained Arts Consulting Group to conduct the parallel search for a new Artistic Director and new Executive Director.

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