COMMISSIONING & DEVELOPMENT

Radical Support of Our Artistic Community

Ars Nova commissions and develops new work with an eye for artists that work with nontraditional creative processes and projects that often combine generative artists across multiple disciplines to collaboratively create a piece of theater. Our adventurous, process-driven environment allows commissioned projects to develop organically and in an artist-focused way by committing to these groundbreaking, form-defying projects for the long haul over several years. Ars Nova’s mission-driven affinity for hybrid works that combine music, comedy and theater makes us a natural home for devised theater pieces with complicated creative structures. And, because these pieces often cannot be made in traditional ways, we have embraced a flexible development process to help nurture these unique pieces from the beginning stages on to a full production.

Current Commissions

Kevin Armento’s plays include Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally (Drama Desk Nomination, Stage Edinburgh Award), Good Men Wanted (New York Stage and Film), Companion Piece (Pleasance Theatre), and killers (Tom Noonan’s Paradise Factory), and upcoming plays include Balls (co-written with Bryony Lavery, 59E59 Theaters / One Year Lease), Playing Hot (Pipeline Theatre) and Devil with the Blue Dress (Bunker Theatre, London). Work has been produced and developed with Arena Stage, Ars Nova, Cape Cod Theatre Project, Dixon Place, The Flea, Johnny Mercer Writers Colony, The New Ohio and Stages Repertory Theatre, and he is an alum of The Working Farm at SPACE on Ryder Farm, Artist-in-Residence at The Drama League and Play Group and Makers Lab at Ars Nova.

 

Sammy Miller A native of Los Angeles, Grammy nominated drummer Sammy Miller has become known for his unique maturity and relentless focus on making music that “feels good” as a drummer, singer and bandleader. Upon completing his Master’s at The Juilliard School, Sammy formed his ensemble, The Congregation. As a band they are focused on sharing the power of community through their music—joyful jazz.

Manik Choksi Broadway: Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. Off-Broadway: Indian Ink, Roundabout; Bunty Berman Presents (Lortel Nomination), New Group; Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, Ars Nova; God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, Encores!; King Tot and DDeb, Debbie, Deborah; Clubbed Thumb; Huck & Holden, Cherry Lane. Regional: Moby Dick and Moby Dick, ART. Film/TV: “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”; “New Amsterdam”; “Good Fight”; “Mindhunter”; “Elementary”; “Happyish”; “One Life To Live” (Vimal Patel), HomePassing Season.  Composer: Those Lost Boys (workshop); Food Odyssey, 3LD. Education: The Juilliard School

nicHi douglas is a Brooklyn-based performer, choreographer, director, playwright and activist.  She has performed all over New York and the country as a freelance actor/dancer in addition to performing nationally with The Dance Cartel and literacy-focused children’s theater company The Story Pirates. She currently teaches Movement & Choreography and Performance Symposium at NYU/Tisch – Playwrights Horizon Theater School studio. Recent stage credits: A Time Like This: Music for Change (Carnegie Hall, Stage Director), Runaways (City Center/Encores! Off-Center and The Delacorte/Public Theater, Associate Director & Associate Choreographer), Primer for a Failed Superpower (Roulette, Choreographer), BLACK GIRL MAGIC SHOW! (Ars Nova ANT Fest and JACK, Director/Choreographer/Playwright), they told us not to pray (Playwrights Horizons Downtown, Director & Choreographer) and Girl From the North Country (The Public Theater, Associate Choreographer). Upcoming: Last Stop on Market Street (Atlantic Theater Company, Choreographer) and where love lies fallow (The Shed, Director/Choreographer/Playwright).

Deepali Gupta is a performance artist, composer, and playwright. Her work explores themes of madness and illucidity in relation to the feminized and colonized body. She makes work intended to unravel the warped weave of narratives surrounding what we term mania, psychosis, mood disorder, and mental illness. She is the youngest daughter of Kashmiri and Bengali immigrants; and a neurodivergent person with a diagnosis of bipolar I. According to the American psychiatric rubric, the mind suffering from “bipolar disorder”—illucid, illegible—experiences cognitive hyperassociativity and produces disorganized speech. This mind makes random turns and follows unknown laws. Deepali’s artistic ethos is intimately related to her neurologic logic. Her work has been presented by Ars Nova, The Public Theater, Lincoln Center Theater, Judson Memorial Church, The Poetry Project, The Bushwick Starr, and Target Margin Theater. She has collaborated with theater and VR companies such as Piehole, Tender Claws, and New Saloon on acclaimed and award-winning projects—including Ski End, Madonna col bambino, and Minor Character. Current projects include I Love You Stranger (developed in Ars Nova’s Makers Lab) and a commission for JACK titled United States v. Gupta, in collaboration with director Caitlin Sullivan. This work runs from the vein of lived experience, and works with private and public archives—bleeding out into any and many landscapes. SoundCloud: deepali (k) gupta / IG: deepaligupta / website: deepaligupta.net

James Harrison Monaco tells stories with music. He considers this one of the oldest art forms in the world, and he’s always looking for new and innovative ways to do it. He’s obsessed with stories of travel, immigration, translation, quiet violence, quiet grace, global loneliness, and time. He’s also a translator (Spanish and Italian), a music composer, and he writes fiction & non-fiction. His works have been presented at the Momentary, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center (where he is a New Writer in Residence), MASS MoCA, and many others. He is one half of the music-storytelling duo Jerome & James.

Antoinette Nwandu is a New York-based playwright. Her Jeff-award winning play, Pass Over, will have its New York debut at LCT3 in June. A filmed version of the Steppenwolf production—directed by Spike Lee—will have its world premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Her play Breach: a manifesto on race in america through the eyes of a black girl recovering from self-hate will have its World Premiere at Victory Gardens in February. Antoinette’s work has been supported by the Sundance Theater Lab, Space on Ryder Farm, Ignition Fest, the Cherry Lane Mentor Project, the Kennedy Center, Page73, PlayPenn, Southern Rep, The Flea, Naked Angels, Fire This Time and The Movement Theater Company. Honors include the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, the Negro Ensemble Company’s Douglas Turner Ward Prize, a Literary Fellowship at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference and spots on the 2016 and 2017 Kilroys lists. Antoinette is a MacDowell Fellow, a Dramatists Guild Fellow and an Ars Nova Play Group alum. She is currently under commission from Echo Theater Company, Colt Coeur and Audible.

River L. Ramirez (they/them) is a NYC based experimental performance artist, comedian, musician, storyteller and writer who wrote, produced and directed the comedy special program “Pervert Everything” for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim (2018) Ramirez appears alongside Fred Armisen on HBO’s Los Espookys (2022), and does character voice over work for Adult Swim’s Birdgirl as the character Charlie (2022), and Teenage Euthanasia as AI Operator and Shelley #3 (2022). This year they will be featured in Julio Torres’ Problemista.

Ramirez’s performance practice extends beyond the limits of television and comedy, their live performance practice being integral to their art. Ramirez teaches performance and public speaking at The Brick Aux in BK and performs experimental comedy at Littlefield in BK. They have been commissioned for original musical and dance based performances by Baryshnikov Arts Center (2021), Gibney (2022), Ars Nova Vision Residency program (2022), and Moma PS1 (2019). In 2022 they toured their latest music/storytelling, experimental comedy show “Ghostfolk” at the Wiesbaden Biennale in Germany and toured solo as an opening act for Will Butler and The Sister Squares. They have written for High Maintenance (2019) and The National Lampoon Radio Hour (2019). Named one of Comedy Central’s Up Next Comedians for 2018, Ramirez was featured in the San Francisco ClusterFest comedy festival, and performed at the Public Theater in New York as part of the January, 2019, Under the Radar Festival. They have been featured on Forbes 30 under 30, The New York Times, Art in America, SSense, and their writing has been featured in CRACKED, VICE, MoMa Magazine, WAIF, and more. You can follow them everywhere online @pileoftears

On The Rocks Theatre Co. is a California born, New York-bred company comprised of longtime collaborators Christopher Ford and Dakota Rose. Through rigorous blending of humor and heart, camp and poignancy and with a rich visual aesthetic drawing on a wide range of mid-century Americana, ON THE ROCKS create wholly original work that tells the stories of imperfect characters making their way in uncertain worlds. With a recurring crew of performers, musicians and dancers, they have made McBeth (2010), Wolfert (2015), The White Stag Quadrilogy (2016), FRED (2017) and their annual holiday bar pageant, Edelweiss (2017 & 2018).

Ray Yamanouchi was born in Queens, raised on Long Island, and received a BA in film and theatre from CUNY Hunter College in Manhattan. His plays include Tha Chink-Mart (PlayPenn 2018), Impact (Finalist, Princess Grace Award 2019), and The American Tradition (New Light New Voices Award 2018). He has developed work with WT Theatre, The Blank Theatre, Rising Circle Theater Collective, Mission to (dit)Mars (Propulsion Lab), Ars Nova (Play Group), and Playwrights’ Center (Core Writer). You can find him online @NotoriousYAMs, or as the host of RE:, a NYC theatre talk show (www.retheatre.nyc).

Composer/lyricist, playwright and songwriter with Warner/Chappell, Zack Zadek has been named by Playbill as “A Contemporary Musical Theatre Songwriter You Should Know”, was a MacDowell Fellow and VCCA Fellow and is a 2019 Dramatist Guild Fellow. Zack won the Weston New Musical Award for his book, music and lyrics to DEATHLESS (dir. Tina Landau) which received its world premiere at Goodspeed Musicals in 2017. His work has been developed and presented at The Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, The 5th Avenue Theatre, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, The Lark, Arena Stage, Goodspeed Musicals, Weston Playhouse, Finger Lakes Musical Theatre Festival, Legacy Theatre, NYMF, The Mitten Lab and in the UK at the London Theatre Workshop and Edinburgh Fringe. He is a two-time finalist for the Kleban Prize as a librettist and a lyricist, a three-time Jonathan Larson Grant Finalist, a resident of the Working Farm @ SPACE on Ryder Farm and SigWorks @ Signature Theatre, KSF Artists of Choice finalist and winner of the inaugural NMI/Disney Imagineering New Voices Award. Other pieces include The Crazy Ones (dir. Sam Buntrock/Hunter Bird), The Role of a Lifetime (dir. Jerry Mitchell) and 6 (dir. Sheryl Kaller/Max Friedman). Upcoming projects include Store Brand (dir. Jaki Bradley) being developed by The Civilians and current commissions from Mike Bosner Productions, Jill Furman Productions, Arena Stage and Ars Nova. He is currently a writer-in-residence with The Orchard Project Greenhouse and The Civilians.

Past Commissions

Check out our history page for more info!

Future Commissions

Commissions are selected annually with support from our artist community. Check back later for more on how you can get involved! 

Upcoming Events

March 20, 2024 - April 20 2024

a sonic narrative collection by James Harrison Monaco
directed by Andrew Scoville

Partners

Kevin Armento & Sammy Miller were commissioned with support from the Stephen Siderow Fund for New Musicals.
Michael Breslin & Patrick Foley are commissioned and developed in partnership with Seaview Productions.
Manik Choksi is commissioned with support from the New York State Council on the Arts.
nicHi douglas is commissioned with support from the New York State Council on the Arts.
Khiyon Hursey is a New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellow.