From Adam Greenfield
It’s December, and you’ve received a letter from Playwrights Horizons’ Artistic Director; I think you know why. But let’s make a deal: you keep reading, and I’ll spare you phrases like “In these unprecedented times,” or “Now more than ever.” Instead, I’ll tell you about this theater I love, which has been the center of my life these past 14 years, and why I’m fiercely devoted to its mission to advance groundbreaking playwriting. I’ll tell you this because I think you love it, too — and because I need you to join me in building its future.
In 2007, I stood across the street from Playwrights, looking up at the building with my stomach in knots. Tim Sanford had invited me to interview for a job as Literary Manager, and I was about to meet him. Playwrights had loomed large in my early years, a shining beacon for art-starved teenage theater geeks like me, who found their religion in the untethered play-worlds imagined by writers. So much more than the legendary plays it produced, I’d always known Playwrights to be a theater with conviction and integrity, driven by a palpable faith in writers, and in the power of new plays to deepen and enrich our time on the planet.
Recently, I stood across the street from Playwrights again, looking up at the building, now temporarily closed — this time, four months into my tenure as Artistic Director — my stomach once again in knots. This theater is my home, where I’ve seen countless miracles transpire: the act three reveal of Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns; Michael R. Jackson’s nightmare-gospel sequence in A Strange Loop; the sweet, sad dance of the Chinyaramwiras at the end of Danai Gurira’s Familiar, the crushing silence that followed the final blackout in Sam Hunter’s The Whale. We gather here, again and again, because we need these worlds, these great reckonings offered to us by playwrights.
Nothing, though, could prepare me for the miracles I’ve seen performed daily outside this building, since we shut our doors.Our staff is firing on every cylinder to tackle the challenges this year has presented: adapting programs to online platforms, inventing entirely new project models, and — most crucially — embracing the call to examine our practices to ensure an equitable future for all artists and audiences. This month, we are re-allocating resources to support our community of artists in the form of our Artists' Relief Fund – a new effort to put money directly into the hands of theater artists in need. All of this work, done on laptops in tiny boxes spread across the city, unified by a belief in our country’s storytellers.
I look up at the building, but my longing is for the people who will fill it: the artists, staff, and audiences who make theater possible. I’m jonesing for the day we’ll share this space again with a renewed awe in our ability to gather in person to experience a new play. My sights are set on that horizon line, our namesake, and I can’t wait to see you there. “Now more than ever” (sorry), “in these unprecedented times” (sorry!), if you can, please join us as we forge the path. Please donate to Playwrights this holiday season.
Yours,
Adam Greenfield
Artistic Director
November 2020