Community Engagement
We’re so excited to meet you!
At Playwrights Horizons, we pride ourselves on being a writer’s theater. But what is a writer without their audience? Community participation is crucial to ensuring each new play is the best version of itself.
Much like our work, our audience is risk-taking and adventurous. Join us this season to participate in workshops, enjoy great food, be in amazing company, and experience one of our new plays.
Upcoming Events
Free Playwriting Workshop | May 17th
Playwrights Horizons presents:
INFINITE PLAY - a generative writing workshop
Facilitated by playwright, teacher, and doula Lyndsey Bourne
This generative workshop is an invitation to upend inherited constraints in your creative practice. Together, we will write and write and write through a series of short-form prompts and processes that are image-rich and structurally adventurous. We’ll explore embodied, task-based writing strategies and language games designed to quiet the analytic mind and help you intuitively discover ideas for story and structure through associative play. We’ll devise new tactics for finding and transforming creative inspiration from the everyday, embracing methods of chance and randomness to bypass or breakthrough our inhibitions and rediscover the breadth of our imagination. While there may be an opportunity to share, participants can expect to spend the day generating lots of new material through experiments that prioritize discovery over product.
Writers, performers, dancers, visual artists, thinkers and makers of all kinds and ages are welcome! We aim to build a space where we can create and share.
Writing materials and light refreshments will be provided.
When: Sunday, May 17th, 2026 | 11:30 AM - 1:30 PM
Where: Playwrights Horizons Theater School | Robert Moss Theater - 440 Lafayette Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10003
RSVP Today!
JEROME Queer Sober Happy Hour | May 31
Playwrights Horizons x NYC Pride present:
Jerome Community Night: Post-Performance Queer Sober Happy Hour
PH's last show of the 25/26 Season, Jerome, is set in a ghost town in the secluded Arizona backcountry, home to Con and Doane, an aging gay couple who’ve built a quiet life far from the chaos of cities and other people—until a stranger arrives, fleeing his damaged past, and falls into their arms. Set at the height of the AIDS epidemic, John J. Caswell, Jr.’s new play is an unexpectedly funny, delicately wrought story of survival, even in the harshest of deserts.
In celebration of this play and welcoming NYC's Pride Month, we are hosting a Queer Sober Happy Hour Powered By Curios Elixirs and Athletic Brewing Co. Local organizations providing resources catered towards our LGBTQIA+ community will be present and tabling at the event! Callen-Lorde, Oasis Pride Center, Claim Our Space Now, and more!
Join us for an afternoon of N/A elixirs and brews, art, and community!
When: Sunday, May 31st, 2026
2:30 PM | Matinee Performance of Jerome
5:00 - 6:00 PM | Queer Sober Happy Hour
Where: Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Lobby | 416 West 42 Street, New York, NY 10036
Buy tickets for the May 31st Performance of Jerome HERE. If you would like to attend, but the ticket price is a barrier, email community@phnyc.org
Community Workshops
We believe in breaking down barriers and creating equity in live theater, and we invite you to be part of this important work.
By joining our Playwrights Horizons Community Engagement initiatives, you'll gain access to free and discounted tickets to special events, workshops, and performances, all while supporting our mission to advance bold and visionary contemporary playwrights by increasing representation and uplifting artists and audiences representative of the people of New York City.
Through our program, your organization can become a community partner and join the growing network of organizations that share our vision. Partners are recognized for their ongoing support and collaboration, contributing to the future of live theater in our community. You'll be proud to share the stage alongside organizations that believe in the power of live theater to inspire change.
Playwriting Workshops
While our other initiatives work to bring folks to our Manhattan theater, our playwriting workshops do the inverse – span NYC’s boroughs, bringing theater directly to the community.
We host free playwriting workshops throughout New York City — in Queens, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem, and Lower Manhattan. We've partnered with The World’s Borough Bookshop, The Bronx Music Hall, Brooklyn Community Pride Center, Sinergia, MAI House Studio, and more!
Playwrights have included Arturo Luíz Soria, Christin Eve Cato, Ungrateful Black Artist, and more.
Get Involved
To become part of our Community Engagement Program, email us at community@phnyc.org to express your interest and learn more about how we can collaborate. Whether you are an individual artist, an individual theater lover, an arts organization, or a community-based group, we welcome you to join us in creating a more accessible, inclusive, and representative off-broadway ecosystem.
Why Join Us?
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Free and Discount Tickets: We are committed to ensuring that everyone, regardless of background, has the opportunity to experience and participate in live theater.
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Through our Community Engagement program, we aim to make live theater affordable for all, breaking down financial and systemic barriers that often prevent people from engaging with cultural experiences.
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Diversity & Accessibility in Live Theater
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Nothing About Us Without Us: Our program centers the voices, realities and lived experiences of, and not limited to, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and d/Disabled people, both on stage and in our audiences. By becoming part of our community, you will have the opportunity to build community across cultures, social identities and more.
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LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR ACCESSIBILITY OFFERINGS →
- Reciprocity: Our program isn’t just about short-term collaboration; it’s about building meaningful, long-term partnerships. By participating as an individual, or by becoming a community partner as an organization, you’ll help us create sustainable, reciprocal relationships that benefit theater artists, audiences, and organizations alike. Together, we will shape a more inclusive and vibrant theater community.
