Playwrights Horizons Announces Noah Silva As New General Manager

Playwrights Horizons has announced Noah Silva as the organization's new General Manager, with Carol Fishman departing the role after 17 impactful years.

As Silva is promoted to Playwrights' senior leadership team, from his former position as Associate General Manager, Playwrights Horizons also expands Associate Artistic Director Natasha Sinha's senior leadership role, putting her into partnership with Silva in overseeing day-to-day planning and producing efforts around Playwrights programming.

Noah Silva's professional career in theater began at Playwrights Horizons, as a stage management fellow—and soon, a stage manager of accomplished works such as Max Posner's The Treasurer and Tori Sampson's If Pretty Hurts... at Playwrights, as well as, with other organizations, What the Constitution Means to Me, Sing Street, and Fairview. After working as a political organizer for the South Carolina Democratic Party and Brad Lander for NYC during the pandemic, he returned to theater as an Assistant Stage Manager on Broadway. In 2022, he came back to his Off-Broadway home—Playwrights—to take on the full-time role of Associate General Manager, where he collaborated with Fishman. Silva now becomes, as General Manager, a senior leader and key member of Playwrights Horizons' producing team in addition to steering its operations, facilities, rentals, production, company management, and audience services efforts.

Playwrights Horizons Artistic Director Adam Greenfield and Managing Director Casey York said, “We have carefully considered our options and are thrilled that our very own Noah Silva will be Playwrights Horizons' next General Manager. We've been inspired by his dedication to our mission, to creatively supporting artists, and to navigating the many ins and outs of our agreements and operational puzzles. We are delighted to give Noah the opportunity to continue growing as a leader, and for Playwrights to continue to benefit from his care and diplomacy. In elevating Natasha Sinha's role as Associate Artistic Director and bringing her into close partnership with Noah, we are also delighted to recognize and empower another extraordinary member of our team.”

As General Manager, Silva looks forward to further championing the next generation of playwrights and their bold innovative work. He says, “It's a tremendous honor to be the next General Manager of the storied Playwrights Horizons. I've learned so much from Carol Fishman, and look forward to continuing the thoughtfulness and care she brought to the job for many years. I'm excited to come to work every day with our staff and our artists, as we expand the theater canon with bold and innovative new work.”

Carol Fishman leaves a titanic legacy at Playwrights, having devoted almost two decades to shaping the organization into one of the nation's leading theater institutions. She steps down to become Theater Manager of Studio Seaview, which recently acquired the Off-Broadway Tony Kiser Theatre—a space Fishman has a long history with, having, in fact, overseen its creation while at Second Stage Theatre (its former occupant). Prior to her tenure at Playwrights, she worked with Second Stage for nearly a decade-and-a-half, in roles of managing director and production manager.

At Playwrights Horizons, Fishman produced some of Off-Broadway's most daring, influential, and acclaimed productions of the past two decades, including David Adjmi's Stereophonic (which became the most Tony-nominated play in history), Michael R. Jackson's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Strange Loop, Annie Baker's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Flick and Obie-winning Circle Mirror Transformation, Bruce Norris's Pulitzer Prize-winning Clybourne Park (which went on to win the Tony Award for Best Play), Will Arbery's Pulitzer finalist Heroes of the Fourth Turning, Larissa FastHorse's The Thanksgiving Play (which became one of 2019's top 10 most produced plays and in 2023 later premiered on Broadway), Clare Barron's Pulitzer finalist Dance Nation, Samuel D. Hunter's The Whale (later adapted into an Oscar-winning film), Robert O'Hara's Lambda Literary Award-winning Bootycandy, and Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns, a post-electric play, deemed by The New York Times one of “the 25 best American plays since Angels in America.”

Natasha Sinha became Associate Artistic Director of Playwrights after serving as Director of Artistic Programs at Signature Theatre and Associate Director at LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater, and dedicating her career as a theatermaker to the development of both new plays and musicals by a diversity of writers. In this position, which the producer and dramaturg stepped into in 2021, she collaborates closely with Playwrights' Artistic Director, Adam Greenfield to curate the organization's onstage work. Her expanded position will now also see her working in partnership with Silva in addition to her work overseeing Playwrights' literary department.

Since 2021, Sinha has worked on all season productions (including Michael R. Jackson & Anna K. Jacobs' Teeth, Alex Tatarsky's Sad Boys in Harpy Land, David Adjmi's Stereophonic, John J. Caswell, Jr.'s Wet Brain, Mia Chung's Catch as Catch Can, Sanaz Toossi's Wish You Were Here, and Dave Harris' Tambo and Bones) and overseen artistic programs such as New Works Lab and Almanac.

About Playwrights Horizons

Playwrights Horizons is a writer's theater committed to the advancement of bold and visionary contemporary playwrights, through the development and production of daring new work and the education of future theatermakers. In a city rich with cultural offerings, Playwrights Horizons' 53-year-old mission is unique among theaters of its size; the organization has distinguished itself by a steadfast commitment to centering the voice of the playwright. It's a mission that is always timely, and one that's necessary in the ongoing evolution of theater in this country. By expanding the U.S. theater canon with a wider range of voices, Playwrights Horizons aims to be a home for the exploration of playwriting and an anti-racist center of curiosity, dialogue, and artistic risk.

Playwrights Horizons offers a season of productions annually on their two stages. Each production is a world, U.S., or New York premiere. Additionally, writers are supported in every stage of their growth through the New Works Lab, a commissions program (supporting several of today's most imaginative playwrights each year), and Almanac (a literary magazine about the theatrical art form). Much like Playwrights Horizons' work, their audience is risk-taking and adventurous; and the organization is committed to strengthening their engagement and feeding their curiosity through all of its programming, onsite and online.

Ultimately, Playwrights Horizons believes that playwrights are the great storytellers of our time, offering essential contributions to civic discourse and illuminating life's paradoxes. And they believe in the singularity of each writer's voice, valuing the broad, eclectic spectrum and diversity of U.S. writers.

The Antiquities kicks off the second half of Playwrights Horizons' 2024-25 season of works that confront the fragility of our relationships, our selves, our societies, and our species, and celebrating the beauty and comedy of our drive to share our fleeting existences with others. In intimate ensemble plays and expansive solo works alike, writers subvert and find new resonances in genre, expand our understandings of the theatrical form, and offer a counter-narrative to everything we hear repeated about an industry in turmoil: revealing the unstoppable ingenuity of artists and the exciting horizons for American theater. The first half of the season featured Gabriel Kahane's Magnificent Bird/Book of Travelers, Sarah Mantell's In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot, and Francesca D'Uva's This Is My Favorite Song. Following The Antiquities, the season offers Ryan J. Haddad's Hold Me in the Water (April 10–May 4) and Jordan Tannahill's Prince Faggot, the latter co-produced by Playwrights and Soho Rep and part of their space-sharing partnership, with performances beginning May 2025.

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