JAG Productions will join New York Theatre Workshop’s (NYTW) Companies-in-Residence program for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons as the first non-New York City-based company. As part of the residency, NYTW will provide artistic and institutional support and act as a second home to JAG in the city, while JAG looks to magnify its scope and presence in the theater world.
"I have dreamt about expanding the work of JAG and building into NYC ever since I started the company,” JAG Producing Artistic Director Jarvis Green said. “Finally, after five years of rising and falling, the moment is here. Finally. Last year the board and staff committed to expanding our artistic development and presence in New York City as part of our strategic vision to establish greater ties with New York-based theatres and the artist community. So, I am beyond thrilled to begin this process with the support, wisdom, and guidance of the endlessly brilliant folx at New York Theatre Workshop. The timing of this opportunity is divine and a thrilling moment for all of us at JAG!"
JAG Productions will receive access to a larger pool of talent, facilities, and audience, while NYTW will continue to promote and learn how theatre can “deepen empathy and spark wonder.” The hope for both organizations is to establish a pipeline between worlds – the rejuvenating and quiet, creative spaces of rural New England and the opportunities and scenes of New York City – that combine to care for the artist throughout the entire theatre-making process.
Of the relationship, Director of Project Development, Workshops and Residencies Rachel Silverman said, “By creating this connection, we’re asking ourselves how can we also introduce our community – our audience community, our artistic community – to JAG as a company and as artists, and vice versa? At NYTW, we’re both a theatre and a workshop, fully in our identity. We produce plays, but we’re also a developmental home for artists and projects. In all of our programming – certainly in the workshop – there’s a real pursuit of, ‘what does support of artists mean and look like outside of productions? What does support of a company look like?’ The companies-in-residence initiative, holistically, is also a way of saying ‘we want to support not just projects, but also companies who are committed to their own communities and their own collectives.’ There’s an absolutely symbiotic relationship between the two theatres we’re both enriching each other.”
NYTW has established roots in the Upper Valley of Vermont and New Hampshire, having done a summer residency at Dartmouth College for the past 30 years. Along with this connection, JAG was selected as a company-in-residence because of how JAG’s mission, previous work, and future ambitions align with NYTW belief “in the transformative power of theatre,” its mission to “cultivate a space where our common humanity is affirmed—where audiences are both challenged and delighted by the daring vision of our artists,” and its commitment to “understand what it means to be alive today; we are committed to exploring new ideas, seeing new perspectives, and hearing new voices.”
“I hope we can help Jarvis embrace the choosing of things as they evolve, and for him to trust and have faith in his own impulses,” NYTW Artistic Director James C. Nicola said. “After 30 years of residency in the Upper Valley at Dartmouth, I feel some part of that community, and I hope that I can see JAG and Jarvis being immensely beneficial to the life of the community, to the evolution of the community, to the culture of the community, to the sense of community. For me, it’s to help enrich the community that I love.”
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ABOUT JAG PRODUCTIONS
At the confluence of the White and Connecticut Rivers, which separate Abenaki land into the states of Vermont and New Hampshire, JAG has nurtured and sustained a multi-generational and multi-racial theatre company with Black artists and community organizers at its center. JAG’s mission is to bring more compassion, empathy, and love into the world by telling stories that challenge hierarchies of race, gender, class, and sexuality. These stories are written and produced by and for Black, Brown, Queer, and Trans folx and the people that love them. JAG strives to tell these crucial stories and provide an artistic sanctuary for creatives seeking rejuvenation, time for reflection, and a space in nature to develop art that will change the world. Since its founding, JAG has curated, produced, and directed contemporary and classical Black theatre to engage and sustain individual and collective transformations that unsettle hierarchies of race, gender, and sexuality. JAG’s primary programming includes: JAGfest, an annual new playwrights’ festival; Theatre on the Hill, five weekends of workshops, concerts, burlesque, and staged readings hosted on the gorgeously picturesque lawn at King Arthur Baking Company in Norwich, VT; and the JAG Musical Theatre Lab, a multi-year lab that offers audiences a new vision of American musical theater storytelling. JAG is committed to expanding its artistic development and presence in New York City as part of its strategic vision to establish greater ties with New York-based theatres and the artist community. Today, JAG Productions offers productions five months out of the year, bringing in nearly 5,000 people each season to experience dynamic artists and education programming just five minutes from Dartmouth College.
New York Theatre Workshop empowers visionary theatre-makers and brings their work to adventurous audiences through productions, artist workshops and educational programs. We nurture pioneering new writers alongside powerhouse playwrights, engage inimitable genre-shaping directors, and support emerging artists in the earliest days of their careers. We’ve mounted over 150 productions from artists whose work has shaped our very idea of what theatre can be, including Jonathan Larson's Rent; Tony Kushner's Slavs! and Homebody/Kabul; Doug Wright's Quills; Claudia Shear's Blown Sideways Through Life and Dirty Blonde; Paul Rudnick's The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and Valhalla; Martha Clarke’s Vienna: Lusthaus; Will Power’s The Seven and Fetch Clay, Make Man; Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest, Far Away, A Number and Love and Information; Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s Aftermath; Rick Elice’s Peter and the Starcatcher; Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová and Enda Walsh’s Once; David Bowie and Enda Walsh’s Lazarus; Dael Orlandersmith’s The Gimmick and Forever; and eight acclaimed productions directed by Ivo van Hove. NYTW’s productions have received a Pulitzer Prize, 25 Tony Awards and assorted Obie, Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards. NYTW is represented on Broadway with Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown developed with and directed by Rachel Chavkin, Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play directed by Robert O’Hara, and the upcoming Sing Street, based on the motion picture written and directed by John Carney, with a book by Enda Walsh, music and lyrics by Gary Clark & John Carney, directed by Rebecca Taichman. NYTW is also represented with the current National Tours of Hadestown and Heidi Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me, directed by Oliver Butler. www.nytw.org
Alongside its artistic and community engagement activities, NYTW is engaged in the essential, sustained commitment of becoming an anti-racist organization in support and affirmation of Black people, Indigenous people and People of Color in its community. In June of 2020, NYTW published its Core Values statement and initial action and accountability steps. In an effort to provide greater transparency, NYTW shares progress updates, further commitments and next steps at nytw.org/accountability.