ABOUT PLAYCO
The Play Company is an OBIE Award-winning Off Broadway theatre production company. Now in its thirteenth season, PlayCo develops and produces adventurous new plays from the U.S. and around the world, advancing a dynamic global view of contemporary theatre and expanding the American theatre repertoire.
As the only New York theatre regularly producing outstanding contemporary plays from abroad alongside new American work, PlayCo’s distinctive international programming links American theatre with world theatre, American artists with the global creative community, and American audiences with a whole world of plays.
CONTACT US
Kate Loewald, Founding Producer
Lauren Weigel, Executive Producer
Melissa Hardy, Artistic Associate
Sarah Frazier, Director of Development
Natalie Ingle, Marketing & Outreach Associate
Sam Rudy, Press Representative
Literary Wing Readers
Melissa Chambers, Adrian Silver, and Paul Takacs
Literary Consultant
Linda Bartholomai
Click Here To Request Submission Guidelines
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ARTISTIC PROGRAMS INCLUDE:
New Work/New World Production Series
The Play Company’s central activity is producing World, American, and New York Premieres of new plays from around the world. We work with both new and established artists, emphasizing support for emerging American writers and the discovery of outstanding contemporary writers from abroad.
Studio
PlayCo offers artists an arena for exploring ideas and generating new work. Developmental tools range from in-house readings to public lab productions. The Studio supports both the investigation of ideas for its own sake, and the preparation of work for full production in our New Work/New World Series.
Universal Voices Translation Program
Our commissioning program for both original works and new translations of plays from abroad.
International Residency Program
The Play Company is an international theatre for new writing, collaborating with playwrights from the U.S. and all over the world. We host writers in New York City so they can play an active role in our productions of their work, and to introduce them to the local community through events such as artist roundtables, panel discussions and audience talk-backs. The Residency Program also offers local students unique educational opportunities by engaging visiting playwrights in special classes and workshops. Students of theatre, literature and foreign studies see the work of visiting writers in production and interact directly with these artists in subsequent classes to learn about different artistic traditions, practices and points of view.
The Idea Lab
PlayCo complements its production season with an eclectic series of stand-alone events, including reading presentations of plays and literature, evenings that examine a particular topic through the work of a variety of prose and poetry writers and/or other media, and panel discussions featuring theatre artists, writers, scholars and community leaders. These events may link to a production, or extend our programming to other ideas or issues of interest to our community.
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THE PLAY COMPANY STAFF
KATE LOEWALD [Founding Producer] created The Play Company with her late partners, Mike Ockrent and Jack Temchin, in 1998. To date PlayCo has produced nineteen world, American and New York premieres of plays from Sweden, Poland, Japan, Romania, India, Germany, Russia, France, Britain and the United States. The company received a 2007 OBIE Award for its “unique contribution to the Off Broadway theatre community”.
From 1990-99 Kate was head of the literary department at the Manhattan Theatre Club, overseeing programming and creative development. She collaborated with many playwrights and directors on new plays, including Terrence McNally, Jon Robin Baitz, Richard Greenberg, Donald Margulies, Elizabeth Swados, Cheryl West, Kia Corthron, Joe Mantello, Mark Brokaw and Nicholas Martin, among many others. She created the MTC Playwriting Fellowships for emerging writers. She was also Director of MTC’s acclaimed Writers in Performance series in 1998 and '99, producing an innovative program of literary events featuring such writers and performers as Walter Mosley, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Gish Jen, Alec Baldwin, Bill Murray, Buck Henry, Anita Desai, Robert Pinsky, Sydney Schanberg, and Arnold Wesker. Prior to MTC, Kate was producing associate to Margo Lion on George C. Wolfe’s Jelly’s Last Jam, Martha Clarke’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, and other plays on and off Broadway.
Kate is on the adjunct faculty of the New School for Drama MFA program and the Fordham College theatre department, and has also taught in the Dramatic Writing Program at New York University. She was a dramaturg at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference from 2000-2003. She serves on the board of Backbone Media, a San Francisco-based documentary film company. She is a graduate of Yale College. In addition to her work with The Play Company, she was the Guest Artistic Director for the Signature Theatre Company in the 2004/2005 season.
LAUREN WEIGEL [Executive Producer] is in her ninth year with The Play Company, where she has produced seventeen premiere plays from around the world. In addition to her work with PlayCo, she produced The Adventures of Barrio Grrrl! by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Quiara Hudes for the 2005 SPF Festival. From 2001-2003, she was the Associate Producer for The Foundry Theatre where she produced Talk by Carl Hancock Rux at the Public Theater, David Greenspan's The Myopia at The Ohio Theatre, The Rude Mechanicals’ Lipstick Traces on U.S. tour, and Rinde Eckert's And God Created Great Whales in London. Lauren also worked in the artistic department of the Manhattan Theatre Club and in the theatre department of International Creative Management, and she has recently served on funding panels for ART/New York and Theatre Communications Group. Lauren is a graduate of Miami University.
MELISSA HARDY [Artistic Associate] has worked with The Play Company for the past five years in various capacities. Her dramaturgy credits include Beasley’s Christmas Party (Keen Company), Conscientious Objector (Keen Company), In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Keen Company), Bronx Express (New York International Fringe Festival), and The Sleeping Girl (Relentless Theatre Company, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s Southern Writer’s Project). Before joining The Play Company, Melissa worked as an associate agent at Bret Adams Limited, representing emerging writers, directors, and designers. Melissa holds a B.F.A. from Ohio University and an MFA from Brooklyn College.
SARAH FRAZIER [Director of Development]
Sarah Frazier has been an enthusiastic fundraiser for a variety of New York organizations including 826NYC and Brooklyn Children's Museum and is excited to join The Play Company as its Director of Development. She has a BFA from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and is currently pursuing a Master's in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute. She is a fan of film, theater and the NFL. Favorite theater credits include a second grade production where she played the role of Nasreddin Hodja, a Turkish folk hero.
NATALIE INGLE [Marketing & Outreach Associate] joined PlayCo in 2013 after moving from Indianapolis where she worked as Program Manager at The Center on Philanthropy. She holds a BA in Creative Writing and an MA in Philanthropic Studies and has managed publicity for a wide variety of organizations, events, and special projects related to the arts, human rights, and international development. A writer and photographer herself, she has always enjoyed connecting audiences with artists and is thrilled to introduce PlayCo to wider audiences.
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BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Carmine Boccuzzi & Victoria Reese, Co-Chairs
Jeffrey A. Sine, Vice Chairman
Michael Dweck, Treasurer
Kate Loewald, Secretary
Trip Cullman
Ruth Hendel
Lawrence Kaplen
Victoria Reese
George Sheanshang, Esq.
Emeritus:
Patricia Heaton
David Hunt
Susan Stroman
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FOUNDING PRODUCERS
JACK TEMCHIN (1946-2003) was a co-founder and producer of The Play Company. He produced the long-running Off-Broadway show El Grande de Coca-Cola in New York and around the world. He produced the feature film Home Movies, directed by Brian DePalma, starring Kirk Douglas and Nancy Allen, released by United Artists. He worked for 15 years with the Manhattan Theatre Club, first as Associate Artistic Director, and then as Literary Consultant. In MTC's Writers in Performance series, he directed events featuring Malcolm McDowell, Jeremy Irons, Bill Murray, Buck Henry, Treat Williams, Marcia Gay Harden, David Strathairn and Alec Baldwin. He served as dramaturg for several plays at MTC including Janusz Glowacki's Hunting Cockroaches and Richard Wesley's The Talented Tenth. At the American Jewish Theatre he produced Another Time by Ronald Harwood, starring Malcolm McDowell and Marion Seldes, and The Day the Bronx Died by Michael Henry Brown. He has edited three books of monologues and scenes for Applause Books, and has written teleplays for Freddy's Nightmares, Tales From the Crypt and animation shorts that appeared on Sesame Street. He produced the musical revue 2 By 5, which introduced the Kander and Ebb song "New York, New York". Mr. Temchin spent seven years as the producer of the Thesis Repertory Season for the Actors Studio Drama School MFA Program in New York City. He was a graduate of Amherst College.
MIKE OCKRENT (1946-1999) was a co-founder and producer of The Play Company. He was the Artistic Director of the acclaimed Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland from 1973-1976. While there he produced many international plays, including Peter Handke's Kaspar, the first UK performance of Strindberg's To Damascus, Dream Play, etc. as well as new plays by CP Taylor and Stanley Eveling. Among his London directing credits were the award-winning new plays Once a Catholic by Mary O'Malley (Royal Court Theatre and West End), Educating Rita by Willy Russell (Royal Shakespeare Company and West End) and Passion Play by Peter Nichols (RSC and West End). He directed two plays at the Royal National Theatre, with Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Sir Ralph Richardson. He was also well known as a director of musicals including the award-winning London production of Follies, London and New York productions of Me and My Girl, Crazy for You (Tony Award for Best Musical) etc. In 1999 he directed Jean Claude Carriere's La Terrasse for Manhattan Theatre Club. He was developing and directing the musicals The Night They Raided Minsky's (which he co-conceived), and, with Mel Brooks, The Producers, for Broadway. He received a B.Sc. in Physics from Edinburgh University.
The Play Company | Celebrating Eleven Years of New Plays from Around the World! Visit playco.org for more
Celebrating Thirteen Years of New Plays from Around the World
2013
