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About PHOTOS AND VIDEOS NEWS CAST/ CREATIVE

Originally launched as a series to celebrate our 40th Anniversary in 2019, NYTW Stories continues to provide a space for our artists, staff and audiences to share anecdotes about NYTW.

Contained in the countless hours of productions, readings, workshops and educational programs are many memories about our theatre and community. Read on to celebrate the people who help us better understand our world and check back monthly as we add new stories!

HanJie Chow

NYTW was the only company that was willing to take me on as an intern without any relevant experiences or knowledge. I am forever grateful to Jeffrey and NYTW for taking in a stray with wide open arms.

Jean Passanante

"I went to Stephen and said, 'I think you need this to be a theatre and I need to be the Artistic Director to be endowed with some kind of artistic authority.' "

Elyse Singer

"I came to NYTW in 1990, when the offices were on 42nd Street, and the theatre was on Perry Street. I started as the dramaturg for the Lisa Peterson-helmed production of Caryl Churchill’s Light Shining in Buckinghamshire."

Michael Greif

"Before Rent, my first job directing in New York was at New York Theatre Workshop, 70 Scenes of Halloween."

Uno Servida

"Casebook is a different experience year-to-year, but I would recommend it to anyone who’s curious about how professional theatre is made. I’m not aware of many other theatres that offer a program like this and I’m very fortunate that it exists in my backyard."

John Collins

"We were working on some dances upstairs in the third floor rehearsal space and I remember, every now and then, somebody coming just to make sure everything was okay because the ceiling was shaking in their offices on the second floor."

Jordan Seavey

"I figured the Workshop wouldn’t mind if I took the teeniest, tiniest of clippings from one of the succulents, a little piece of the Workshop to keep growing at home. More than 10 years later, the tiny clipping is now a much bigger plant, and it’s still growing."

Ed Sylvanus Iskandar

"My most memorable experience is happily also my most durable one, which is the incredible, profound, deep, nourishing friendships that I have made with everybody that works at the organization."

Tony Kushner

"When I had finished the first part of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, it was weird. It was three and a half hours long. I’d never heard it out loud. So, the first reading ever of the full script of Millennium Approaches was at New York Theatre Workshop."

Elizabeth Marvel

"it was an extraordinary experience to be empowered as a young actor to say my ideas are important and important enough to be given space at New York Theatre Workshop."

Doug Wright

"I have one of the very best anagrams in the history of New York Theatre Workshop. My full name, Douglas G. Wright, becomes Gilda S. Guthrow."

Anaïs Mitchell

"I worked at and with the New York Theatre Workshop for a couple years on my musical, Hadestown. It’s a piece I had been working on previously, mainly in the music world, and had always wanted to further develop for the stage."

Dael Orlandersmith

"Being part of the Usual Suspects is really great because you can see other people’s work. I love the way it’s handled because there’s a thing called Liz Lerman Method, which is opposed to someone saying to you, 'That’s stupid, what you just wrote.' "

Tessa Dunning

"My all-time favorite production that I worked on at NYTW was Far Away, the Caryl Churchill play directed by Stephen Daldry in the fall of 2002."

Nathan Alan Davis

"Oftentimes, in a climate like New York where it’s really wonderful and there’s all kinds of things going on, everything is very high stakes in a certain way. So, oftentimes, you can feel pressured to produce amazing things all the time."

Katie Palmer

"In June, a new Artistic/Casting Intern showed up named Jacob Marx Rice. He was just (barely) cute enough for me to put up with him being such a brat."

Lucas Hnath

"When I first started writing Red Speedo, the theatre that I pictured the play taking place in was New York Theater Workshop."

Martyna Majok

"I thought that nobody would want to do Cost of Living. NYTW gifted me with the resources to work with actors, dramaturgs, and directors and encouraged me to pursue the story."

Will Power

"Jim took a chance as well because a lot of times artists are kind of boxed in to one thing... It’s very rare, especially in New York. Things are so expensive; people usually don’t take chances there. This was one place that allowed for new ideas within an artist, which is really great."

Lameece Issaq

"When someone has the faith in you, you rise to the occasion and you do the thing you didn’t think you could do. It was such an extraordinary time... to have my theatre company produce it with New York Theatre Workshop."
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