Lark

Founded in 1994, the LARK PLAY DEVELOPMENT CENTER is a laboratory for new voices and new ideas, providing playwrights and their collaborators with resources to develop their work in a supportive yet rigorous environment and encouraging artists to define their own goals and creative processes in pursuit of a unique vision.

The LARK embraces new and diverse perspectives at home and in all corners of the world, supporting innovative strategies to help new work reach audiences through a network of evolving partnerships.

They strive to reinvigorate the theatre's ancient and enduring role as a public forum for discussion, debate and community engagement, and to strengthen society’s capacity to imagine its future through storytelling.

Without an audience, there is no theatre. The Lark is unique in its efforts to integrate audiences into the creative process from its initial stages. They recognise the kinetic energy that shared by those who create plays and those who receive them, so the Lark encourages a diverse community to observe and participate in their work.

The Lark brings together professional actors, directors and playwrights to allow writers to learn about their work by seeing it—and by receiving feedback from a community of committed artists.

Founded by a trio of artists—a director, a designer and a writer whose careers had begun in regional theatres—the company initially presented plays in full production at a variety of New York venues including Theatre Row and the Manhattan Class Company before finding a home at the Chelsea Playhouse with a consortium of three other nonprofits. Producing Director John Clinton Eisner was a co-founder and continues to serve as the organisation’s leader.

Early on, the Lark produced classic as well as new plays, including Shakespeare, and sent Theater for Young Audiences (TYA) tours to nearby schools. The Lark’s annual Playwrights’ Week Festival was launched in the spring of 1995 and continues as the Lark’s longest running program.

Plays reviewed in the Literary Wing, exclusive of other play submission efforts, have increased from approximately 150 in 1995 to between 500 and 700 annually.

The Lark began to model an aesthetic of “functional minimalism” and, in this spirit, the company launched its first BareBones® season of new plays, including The Thirteen Hallucinations of Julio Rivera by Stephen R. Culp and Pera Palas by Sinan Ünel.

New developments were occurring on the programming side as well. During the summer of 2001, Arthur Kopit and a cadre of esteemed dramatists signed on to inaugurate the Playwrights’ Workshop, a hothouse for talented emerging and established playwrights.

They began providing career support for emerging playwrights participating in Lark programs and expanded their network of relationships with theatres around the country interested in producing Lark-developed plays.

THE STAFF

John Clinton Eisner, Artistic Director

Catherine Coray, hotINK Curator and Director

Suzy Fay, Associate Program Director

Andrea Hiebler, Artistic & Literary Coordinator

Lisa Rothe, Director of Offsite Programs and Partnerships

Saviana Stanescu, Program Director, U.S./Eastern European Exchange

Lloyd Suh, Director of Onsite Programs

Andrea Thome, Program Director, U.S./México Exchange

Michael Robertson, Managing Director

Maggie Albert, Development Assistant

Seta Bairamian, Executive Assistant