The Lark Playwrights Workshop To Continue As Part of Second Stage Theater's NEXT STAGE FESTIVAL

Second Stage Theater which became the new home for the Lark Playwrights Workshop in 2022, will conclude this year’s program on March 26th, which also marks the end of the Company’s inaugural Next Stage Festival.
 
This year’s playwrights, who are mentored over six private sessions by established theater artists David Henry Hwang, Rajiv Joseph, and May Adrales, are Matt Barbot, Hilary Bettis, Zora Howard, Sam Hunter, and Lina Patel.  The sessions ran from January 17th through March 26th. The Lark program is administered by Andrea Hiebler.
 
In 2022, Second Stage Theater became the new home for The Lark Playwrights Workshop program. This annual residency gathers five playwrighting fellows at various career stages. Playwrights meet regularly, sharing excerpts of new work in progress, read cold by a group of high caliber actors in an informal but rigorous laboratory environment. Writers who have developed work through the program include Sarah Ruhl, Lucas Hnath, Jen Silverman, Anna Ziegler, and Theresa Rebeck, among others.  The establishment of The Lark Playwrights Workshop at Second Stage Theater continues the Company’s mission of developing new plays by American writers and is a crucial component of the institution’s play development pipeline.
 
Prior to the pandemic shutdown, three of the four most recent Pulitzer Prize winners were written by Lark playwrights – Lynn Nottage, Martyna Majok, and Katori Hall. Of those Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, two – Nottage’s Sweat and Majok’s Cost of Living – were directly written in Lark programs.  In 2019, five of the ten most produced plays in the country were by Lark playwrights. All five of these writers were female-identifying or BIPOC artists.
 

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS
 

Matt Barbot

is a writer from Brooklyn, NY. His play El Coquí Espectacular and the Bottle of Doom received its world premiere at Two River Theater in January of 2018. Infallibility was selected as one of Indie Theater Now's "Best of FringeNYC 2013." The Venetians was a winner of Roundabout Theatre Company's 2019 Columbia@Roundabout New Play Series. Recently, his short play "A List of Some Shit I've Killed" was published as part of the Red Bull Theater's anthology Red Bull Shorts Volume III. Matt's first play for young audiences, Stoo’s Famous Martian American Gumbo, was commissioned by Peppercorn Theatre and was produced there in Summer 2019, and again in 2021 as part of Hangar Theatre’s KIDDSTUFF series. Matt recently workshopped his play, the beautiful land i seek (la linda tierra que busco yo), at Fault Line Theatre with director José Zayas. In 2022, Matt became the first winner of the Miami New Drama x The Black List New Play commission. Matt received his MFA from Columbia University and was recently a New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Fellow and a member of The Civilians' R&D Group. 
 

Hilary Bettis

is a critically acclaimed playwright, TV writer, and filmmaker. She hails from a Mexican mother who grew up on the border and a Southern father who grew up Methodist. Her work is a culmination of these cultures, exploring the American identity through a working-class Latiné lens. Bettis won the 2019 Writers Guild of America Award for her work on the Emmy Award-winning FX series “The Americans.” She wrote for the Emmy-nominated Hulu miniseries “The Dropout.” She’s currently developing a TV series with Toluca Pictures, and a series with Fifth Season & Anonymous Content. Her plays have been developed and produced all over the US and Mexico. Theater accolades include Edgerton Foundation New Play Awards, National Endowment for the Arts Grant, and a finalist for the Blackburn Prize, among others. She’s currently under commission at Roundabout Theatre, Miami New Drama, Untitled Theatricals, and is writing a musical with Grammy composer Julio Reyes Copello. She’s an alumni of The Sundance Institute Episodic TV Lab, a graduate of The Juilliard School, a board member of New Georges, and proud member of the WGA East.
 

Zora Howard

is a Harlem-bred writer and performer. Plays include Stew (2021 Pulitzer Prize Finalist; Page 73 Productions); Hang Time (The Flea); The Master’s Tools (Under the Radar Festival; WTF); Bust (2022 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Finalist); and Good Faith. Her work has been developed at SPACE at Ryder Farm, The Lark, Brown Arts Institute, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Mercury Store and Cape Cod Theatre Project, among others. In 2020, her film Premature (2020 Film Independent John Cassavetes Award nominee), which she co-wrote with director Rashaad Ernesto Green, opened in theaters following its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Zora is the inaugural Judith Champion Fellow at Manhattan Theatre Club, a 2022 Lilly Award and Helen Merrill Award recipient. 
 

Samuel D. Hunter

grew up in Moscow, Idaho and lives in New York City with his husband and daughter. His plays include The Whale (Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, GLAAD Media Award, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play), A Case for the Existence of God (New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play, Hull-Warriner Award), A Bright New Boise (Obie Award, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), Greater Clements (Drama Desk nomination for Best Play, Outer Critics Circle Honoree), Lewiston/Clarkston (Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), The Few, A Great Wilderness, Rest, Pocatello, The Healing, and The Harvest, among others. His screenplay adaptation of The Whale, directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Brendan Fraser, was nominated for the 2023 BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and received two Oscars, including Best Actor. He was also a writer and producer on all four seasons of FX’s Baskets. He is the recipient of a 2014 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, a 2012 Whiting Writers Award and an honorary doctorate from the University of Idaho. He holds degrees in playwriting from NYU, The Iowa Playwrights Workshop, and Juilliard.
 

Lina Patel

is a playwright and television writer whose work investigates power and non-traditional relationships in a precarious world. Her work has been commissioned, developed, and produced across the country and across the pond, including Center Theater Group, East West Players, the Japanese American National Museum, Echo Theater Company, Circle X Theater, Ammunition Theater, Playwright's Arena, Chalk Repertory, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Silk Road Rising, The Goodman, Yale Repertory, The New Group, Cherry Lane Theater, and RADA. Residencies include New Harmony Project (2012 and 2021) and Sewanee Writers Conference (Walter E. Dakin Fellow). This year, Lina is co-moderating and participating in the inaugural Playwright's Roundtable and Rogue Machine Theater in L.A., and her new play, Traces of Desire, will be published by Bloomsbury, U.K., in 2024. This fall, she will be working with Summit Theater in Indiana on her new play, "Sick Girl or, Don't Hate Me Cuz I'm Pretty.” Lina is a proud member of the WGA and alumni of the Warner Brothers Writer's Workshop. On television, Lina served as co-producer for Ava DuVernay's "Cherish the Day." Previously, DC's "Krypton" and CW's "Frequency". Lina is currently developing an original mental health drama for BET Plus and a hybrid-animation project about a female rocket prodigy for Trioscope Studios. Lina is a Lecturer of Theater at Pomona College and got her start as a critically acclaimed theatre and voice-over actor.
 

ABOUT THE NEXT STAGE FESTIVAL

THE NEXT STAGE FESTIVAL formalizes Second Stage Theater’s artistic pipeline, providing support at crucial early moments in a playwright’s development - from writers with partial drafts to early career playwrights ready for their New York debuts.
 
THE NEXT STAGE FESTIVAL is made possible in part by the New American Voices Fund, which was established in 2016 by a lead gift from David Stone.
 
The Festival’s centerpiece production brought the model of Second Stage’s Uptown Series to the Tony Kiser Theater with the acclaimed, New York Times Critic’s Pick, world premiere production of Kate Douglas’ play, THE APIARY, directed by Kate Whoriskey. THE APIARY ran from January 31st to March 3rd, officially opening February 13th.
 
The Next Stage Festival also included The Judith Champion Reading Series, featuring three new plays developed over a week of rehearsal with top-notch directors and casts and targeted design support. Each play received a one-night-only presentation at the Tony Kiser Theater. The plays are D.A. Mindell’s ON THE EVOLUTIONARY FUNCTION OF SHAME, Sarah Mantell’s THE GOOD GUYS, and Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin’s TIGER BEAT.  The Judith Champion Reading Series is funded by a grant from the Judith Champion Charitable Fund and Mel Litoff.

Additionally, the Next Stage Festival included The Nancy Denovan Musical Reading, a new musical presented after a week of rehearsal. This year’s musical was EIGHTY-SIXED, with a book by Jeremy J. King and music and lyrics by Sam Salmond. It was also seen in a one-night-only presentation at the Tony Kiser Theater. 
 

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