Thank you, founders!

Dozens of you became founding donors, subscribers, producers, or sponsors with our initial campaign -- and have assured the launch of the New Play Forum, with our initial season starting in the fall of 2018. We are very grateful for your support.

Please continue to our www.newplayforum.org website, where you can purchase a ticket to our 'Celebration for the Launch of the New Play Forum' on Monday, April 30th, UpStage at the Palace Theatre in Stamford. You can also learn about our season and become a donor, subscriber, sponsor, or 'founding hero.'

The Campaign

This is a campaign to fund and found the New Play Forum, a theater company to launch at the Stamford Center for the Arts in 2018. With a wine reception at each performance, the New Play Forum will build a local cultural community while helping to create new plays and musicals. 

Although the Greater Stamford area has hundreds of thousands of residents and workers who largely love theater, there will only be a theater devoted to new works (as opposed to primarily staging revivals of old chestnuts) if we can get the word out quickly enough to enough people–and reach a critical mass of founding donors and subscribers. 

We think you will love having such a new cultural institution in your area. In this campaign we are making a range of founding subscriber and donor options available. We hope you will find one that works for you and together we can make the New Play Forum a reality.

We need $30,000 to get started on an inaugural season of two readings and three ‘lab’, or barebones  (e.g., without full costumes or sets), productions. From a $40 founding donor and/or $158 founding subscriber to a $25,000+ founding executive producer, we have a wide range of founder options for you. (Or, you can simply donate whatever amount you choose.) We think founding subscriptions will make fantastic gifts for friends and family with whom you would like to share the season.

The NPF will be dedicated to the development and presentation of new plays and musicals, with an inaugural season to include two readings and three lab productions. The lab productions planned for our inaugural season include the musical Samson, the comedic Irish drama Inside Danny’s Box, and the comedy Sketchy.

There is a special magic in experiencing and providing feedback on new works as they progress from the reading to lab to full production stages of production. It is especially challenging for new works to move from the reading to full production level, and so our lab productions provide a pivotal point of development in the process. As the New Play Forum grows, we anticipate staging a limited number of full productions as well some works in neighboring Greenwich (starting with our second season), but we will always be focused on the creation and creators of new works.

We want you to come be part of our theater community! We will host a wine reception with every performance as we build a community among local theater lovers and our teams creating the works. We hope you will think of friends and family here locally who would enjoy partaking in this community with you –and either support the founding of the New Play Forum by buying subscriptions for them as well or by sending them a link to this campaign and inviting them to join you there. 

By focusing on new works with readings and lab productions, we will not only be able to fill a niche otherwise not offered in the area, but we will also be able to do so cost effectively. As the following chart depicts, our $30,000 funding launch goal is needed to cover the costs of our creative teams, such as actors, directors, and music directors; theater space; theater labor; marketing and administration, etc.

This is our goal for launch funding, but you should know that we also have a three-year budget to secure our foundation as a viable, ongoing cultural entity. That three-year budget is for $750,000, so we would love to go over our $30,000 goal and we would be happy to provide more details on our plans—just ask us!

The Team

Among the creative team in our inaugural season will be the likes of director Andrea Andresakis, playwright Derek Murphy, and artistic director Laura Stuart. 

Andrea Andresakis, Stage Director

Ms. Andresakis’ dozens of directing and choreography credits include Off-Broadway, National tours and International productions including the east coast premiere of 

The Marvelous Wonderettes and The Beatles in India (New Delhi, India). Ms. Andresakis is a SDCF grant recipient for Arms and The Man by George Bernard Shaw. www.Andresakis.com

Andrea details her theater experience within Connecticut here.

Derek Murphy, Playwright

Derek Murphy, was born and educated in Dublin Ireland, he moved to NY in his 20’s and has called it home ever since.  His plays have been performed on both sides of the Atlantic, and include 

Appendage and A Short Wake both chosen as part of Origin Theatre’s 1st Irish Theatre Festival in NY (2009 and 2016), and Stand Up Man, which premiered at at Belfast’s famed Baby Grand Opera House in 2014.  His most recent play Dyin’ For It was performed at this years "Electric Picnic” Festival in Ireland.

Derek describes his play “Inside Danny’s Box” and more 

here. 

Andrea and Derek discuss the New Play Forum and its importance for playwrights (and more) here, and Andrea and Derek talk about Derek’s play “Inside Danny’s Box” (and more) here.

Laura Stuart, Artistic Director:

Laura is a graduate of the Broadway League’s 14-week Commercial Theater Institute and Producer Development Program. She has been a composer member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in Boston, where she also studied at the Berklee College of Music. Laura has served on the board of Theater Resources Unlimited, the NYC-based nonprofit supporting producers, has been a member of the Dramatists Guild, and has been a theater producer in NYC.  Among her musicals in development are Samson and Gulliver’s Further Travels. She is a resident of Greenwich, CT.

 

We are also especially appreciative of the Stamford Center for the Art’s Executive Director, 

Mike Moran, and his team, who are helping to make the New Play Forum possible.

 

The Location

For our inaugural season, we plan to stage our performances at the UpStage upper lobby theater of the Stamford Center for the Art’s historic Palace Theater at 61 Atlantic St, Stamford, CT 06901. 

Although we may be able to also stage some performances in neighboring towns in future years (with a plan to expand to Greenwich in our second season), the SCA is a great central location. 

The theater is five miles from the center of Darien, six miles from the Avenue in Greenwich, and seven miles from New Canaan. 

 
Although you may be able to find some free evening parking, there is also $3 event parking, with your ticket stub, in the garage directly across the street from the main Palace Theater entrance.

 

Why we need your support now!

We can only make the New Play Forum happen with your support. Our campaign ends Saturday, February 3rd, 2018. (If by that date we don't receive sufficient funding to launch, all donation and subscription funds will be returned.)

We need as much momentum, and especially as much early momentum, as possible. Your early support will show that our community is interested in this new cultural institution, and thus to help attract the further donors we need to meet our goal.

So we ask you to become a founding donor and/or founding subscriber today--and then spread the word to your friends and family who you think would like to become founding donors and/or subscribers as well, whether via email, Facebook, or Twitter.

Thank you!

(Interested in a corporate sponsorship? Contact us! info@newplayforum.org)


The New Play Forum is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of The New Play Forum must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.