NYC Arts: The Complete Guide to Art and Culture

Each season Playwrights Horizons presents six productions. The company’s 198-seat mainstage theater presents full-length productions. An additional 99- to 128-seat theater is used for more adventurous or experimental work. The productions there have shorter runs and are generally produced on a smaller scale, but receive the same high level of care as all company productions.

Under the artistic leadership of Tim Sanford, the company continues to support contemporary American playwrights, composers and lyricists, including both veterans and emerging writers. Artists are supported through every phase of their development by a number of initiatives including script and score evaluations, paid commissions, first and staged readings, musical theater workshops and of course both full-fledged studio and mainstage productions. Readings, usually open to the public, take place on Monday afternoons.

Since its founding in 1971 the company has presented the works of over 350 writers. Among its many fine productions are Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero; Kirsten Childs’s The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin; Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey’s James Joyce’s The Dead; William Finn’s March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland; Christopher Durang’s Betty’s Summer Vacation and Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You; Richard Nelson’s Goodnight Children Everywhere; Jon Robin Baitz’s The Substance of Fire; Scott McPherson’s Marvin’s Room; A. R. Gurney’s Later Life; Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s Floyd Collins; and Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley’s Violet. In addition there are the company’s four Pulitzer-Prize winners: Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife; Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George; Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy; and Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles.

Playwrights Horizons has been one of several companies instrumental in the revitalization of Theater Row. The company’s auxiliary programs include the Playwrights Horizons Theater School, which is affiliated with New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and Ticket Central, a central box office that supports the Off-Broadway performing arts community.

The recognition accorded the company and its affiliated artists is nothing short of stunning and includes, in addition to the aforementioned Pulitzers, multiple Tonys, Obies, Drama Desk awards, Outer Critics Circle awards, New York Drama Critics awards, Lucille Lortel awards, Audelco awards and an Olivier, among others.

• Disability Access: Fully accessible
• Gift Shops: Books, CDs, DVDs, magazines, scripts
• On-Site Food: Concessions bar open before show and during intermission, where applicable