Kickstarter

Working Theater is proud to announce our 3rd Annual Directors Salon: WORK FOR CHANGE.  Salon founders Luke Harlan, Dina Vovsi, and Nicole A. Watson, with the support of Working Theater Producing Artistic Director Mark Plesent, will be curating the 3rd Annual week-long Directors Salon to support the work of emerging NYC directors. The Salon gives emerging directors the chance to showcase their work, meet with other directors and theater artists, and to hear from leaders in the fields of directing and arts management.

This past fall, we were inspired by the revolutionary Occupy Wall Street movement and began thinking about art as activism - what do we, as theater artists, work for?  We chose the theme WORK FOR CHANGE for this year’s Salon in order to be able to explore what it means to be a working person, and a working artist, in 2012 - and asked 7 talented playwrights - Jocelyn Bioh, Bekah Brunstetter, Ed Cardona, Jr., Tim J. Lord, Rehana Lew Mirza, Matthew Paul Olmos, and Crystal Skillman - to respond to the prompt, Will Work For ____.  The 7 short plays will be directed by 7 different directors chosen at random at our opening night party, and will be presented at the end of the week at our final event.  We are including a panel on Theater as Activism this year, adding union representatives to our Agent/Producer/Artistic Director Panel, and have just chosen our 3 projects - spearheaded by Anita Gonzalez, Melissa Moschitto, and Jenna Worsham - for our Night of Director-Driven Work!

 A central part of the Salon's mission is to provide these opportunities free of charge. In order to fulfill this mission, we are asking for your help!  For the first time, we have received a small grant to support the Salon, but due to our sold-out performances last year, we have decided to move to a larger (and more expensive) space in order to accommodate more audience members and give our directors more playing room.  We are passionate about creating a community of directors in New York, and a place where we can come together, network, share work, and exchange ideas and resources. As the past two years of the Salon showed us, this is a service that is desperately needed in the community of emerging directors. 

Your support will go directly to fulfilling this mission by providing space for the festival, compensation for our participating artists, administrative costs, and will lay the groundwork for a continuing service beyond the 2012 Directors Salon.

Thank you so much in advance for your help, and we look forward to seeing you at the Salon!