RATTLESTICK PRODUCTIONS INC
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Mission Statement
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is an Obie Award-winning theater in the West Village, dedicated to artists and their ambitious work. The mission of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is to present diverse, challenging, and provocative plays that inspire empathy and provoke conversations in response to the complexities of our culture. We foster the future voices of the American theater by taking risks on challenging plays that might not otherwise be produced. Unique in our dedication, Rattlestick guarantees a second production to any playwright we take on, regardless of the critical reception of their first play. Rattlestick has produced the first plays and early works of some of today’s leading voices, including Annie Baker (The Aliens), Sheila Callaghan (Everything You Touch), Jesse Eisenberg (The Revisionist), Samuel D. Hunter (The Few), Adam Rapp (The Hallway Trilogy), José Rivera (Massacre, Sing to Your Children), Lucy Thurber (The Hilltown Plays), and Craig Wright (The Pavilion).
About This Cause
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater was founded in 1994 as a home for playwrights, with a focus on nurturing new work and bringing the playwright’s vision to the stage. Since 1994, Rattlestick has produced more than ninety world premieres in the past 22 seasons. In 2016 Artistic Director Daniella Topol succeeded Founding Artistic Director David van Asselt. With this dynamic new leadership and staff, Rattlestick is now in a position to confidently and consistently take the artistic risks that are so core to the company's mission and so necessary to the field. Rattlestick holds itself to a high standard for inclusion and representation. In our 22nd Season, we have made concerted efforts to reach artists and audiences traditionally underrepresented in theater, especially people-of-color and low-income communities. By increasing our social media presence and physically reaching out to different community organizations such as The LGBT Center and The Sol Project, we are expanding the reach of its work and its artists. Currently, this is modeled within Rattlestick’s Middle Voice where 62% of the young artists are of color and 100% are from low-income backgrounds. Our hope is to diversify our audiences to overall increase the attendance of people-of-color by 15%, increase the attendance of students and under 30 patrons by 30%, while also having 30% male, 40% female, 30% gender non-conforming. Mainstage Season Rattlestick produces 3-4 full productions of new works each year. We aim to provide a positive, nurturing experience for emerging playwrights, to present diverse and challenging plays that otherwise might not be produced, and to foster the future voices of American theater. When we take on a playwright, we guarantee him or her a second production ¬¬ regardless of the reception of the first. We have produced the first plays and early works of some of today's leading voices, including Annie Baker, Sheila Callaghan, Jesse Eisenberg , Adam Rapp, Lucy Thurber, and Craig Wright. We have also produced works by some of our nation’s most important playwrights, including Charles Fuller, Craig Lucas, Dael Orlandersmith, and José Rivera whose risky and challenging works other theaters are unwilling to produce. New Voices/New Works Program In addition to producing a mainstage season each year, Rattlestick maintains an emerging playwrights program to develop new work. By providing a diverse set of artistic opportunities, Rattlestick’s New Voices/New Works Program assists playwrights in readying their current projects for full productions at Rattlestick and other theaters. These opportunities include: We will continue our commitment to discovering new writers and new plays through our New Voices/New Works Program, helmed by Literary Fellows (Ngozi Anyanwu, Jessi D. Hill, David Mendizábal, and Cori Thomas), theater artists with diverse perspectives, both aesthetically and culturally who are using innovative models of engaging diverse artists to develop unique and challenging works for future productions with Rattlestick. Our New Voices/New Works Program includes: New Songs Now, a summer concert series in which 10 songwriters share new material; F*CKING GOOD PLAYS FESTIVAL, an annual festival of play readings for the public; TheaterJam, a 10-hour festival during which more than 40 artists share excerpts of new work; and Actor/Writer Lab, an informal playwriting group for actors who also write plays. The Literary Team and the New Voices/New Works Program ensure that the company not only has an exciting roster of plays in the current season, but also has an active development pipeline of projects to be created and produced in the next one to three years. The ‘Stick Actor/Writer Lab - Created in Spring 2016, this monthly rotating writers group welcomes actors from diverse experience levels who are writing new material for the stage. Recent participants include: Rebecca Hall, Paola Lazaro, Florencia Lozano, Diana Oh, Keith Randolph Smith and Zachary Quinto. New Songs Now - In July 2016, Rattlestick partnered with the Araca Group to present a concert series of songwriters’ new material, with songwriters Eisa Davis, Diana Oh, Max Vernon, among others. From this series, Rattlestick discovered Diana Oh and her piece, {my lingerie play}, which we will produce September 2018. The ‘Stick Lit Team - In June 2016, Rattlestick formed a Literary Team with theater artists from diverse perspectives, both aesthetically and culturally. These artists include: Ngozi Anyanwu, Jessie D. Hill, David Mendizábal, and Cori Thomas. Along with Rosalind Productions, monthly meetings are held to discuss the development of different artists provocative work. The F*CK!NG Good Plays Festival - Curated by the ‘Stick Literary Team, this week-long reading series of new full-length works was presented in September 2016. This year’s Festival featured works by Christina Anderson, Stephen Belber, Liza Birkenmeier, Mashuq Deen, Meg Miroshnik, James Tyler, and David Zheng. From this festival, we have committed to producing Mashuq Deen’s play “Draw the Circle” in the 17/18 Season. TheaterJam - Curated by the ‘Stick Literary Team, this is an open ¬access seven-hour long festival where dozens of writers share excerpts of new plays. This year’s TheaterJam took place on March 25 from 3pm to 10:30pm and featured works by 25 writers with total audience numbers hitting 177 people and over 75 actors and directors involved. The writers included a mix of our Middle Voice (Rattlestick’s apprentice company) artists, Rattlestick alumni (Mike Daisey, Dael Orlandersmith, José Rivera, Lucy Thurber), and artists new to the company (Stacey Rose, Samantha Chase). Middle Voice at Rattlestick In 2012 The Emerging Playwrights Program at Rattlestick founded Middle Voice at Rattlestick, an apprentice company for young theater artists, mentored by award-winning playwright, Lucy Thurber. Middle Voice is a collective of young actors, directors, designers, and playwrights from diverse backgrounds. The mission of the Middle Voice is to create theater that embraces risk and encourages ensemble, and to reach different class segments in American society through the company’s work. Since 2012, Middle Voice has produced six workshop productions of new plays by company members. Middle Voice has also conducted ten educational workshops through The Baldwin Project, an educational program centered on the writings of social activist James Baldwin. Middle Voice at Rattlestick, an apprentice company was created to address a need that its founding members perceived in the theater community. Founding members perceived a need for a place for artists aged 18 to 30 to experiment with their work at a professional level, without the fear of failure on a professional scale. Middle Voice members understand that the most important resource for developing artists is the time and space to work. They believe that apprenticeship and practical exploration can act as an alternative to graduate school. Now, Middle Voice is that and more. Middle Voice a collection of theater artists – writers, actors, directors, producers – united in the belief that people from different walks of life can form a single, strong artistic voice. Middle Voice company members believe that conversation has the power to breed mutual understanding, and they strive to create meaningful dialogues with their audiences. Middle Voice is a collective of 26 multi-disciplinary, ethnically-diverse, theater artists under the age of 30, united in the belief that people from different walks of life can form a single, strong artistic voice. Thanks to our greening grant from the Broadway Green Alliance, we were able to empower the lighting designers from this young company to purchase lighting for their own design that was also energy efficient and environmentally friendly. ‘Stick Studies ‘Stick Studies is Rattlestick Playwrights Theater’s new Arts-¬in-¬Education Programming. The program is aimed at connecting high¬-school students to our Mainstage Series season of new contemporary plays. This year: to the Young Women’s Leadership Network (YWLN) of Brooklyn and Queens with Drama, Literacy, and Social Studies The YWLN, founded by Andrew and Ann Tisch, provides girls growing up in low-¬income communities with a high-¬quality college preparatory education modeled upon the finest private schools. Rattlestick’s partnership with YWLN will serve 150 students, in 6 sections (50 students in Brooklyn, grade 10; 100 students in the Bronx, grade 11 and 12), for 18 sessions starting in January and culminating in 2 student matinees of Orange Julius by Basil Kreimendahl in February. Our plan is to repeat this structure with our second production of Seven Spots on the Sun by Martín Zimmerman. These workshop sessions will address all 5 NYC DOE Blueprint Standards in the Arts Strands, linking the content of our two Main Stage productions to their drama, literacy and social studies curriculum. Students will interact with these plays through an examination of history, language and literature, creative writing and personal response. The primary goal of this program is for these young students to develop their writing and critical thinking skills as modeled by Basil Kreimendahl and Martín Zimmerman. The writing prompts are designed to progress from structured to more freeform in order to activate the students’ critical thinking skills. Using Orange Julius as an example, students will respond to the historical narrative of the Vietnam War and to the personal journey Nut takes. By the last prompt, the students will write, design and perform their own theatrical scenes.