New Visions
New York Classical Theatre, an AEA, Off-Broadway Theatre, has expanded its repertoire beyond the historic classics and launched its first-ever new play competition, New Visions. In 2023, we are embarking on the second of this three-year initiative to develop two new, original plays for full production in our 2025 and 2026 seasons
Per our newly expanded mission statement, we affirm that we are “committed to developing and producing new plays by living playwrights that enrich and expand our understanding of what defines a classic.” We believe that everyone—regardless of social, economic, or educational background—should have the opportunity to enjoy live professional theatre together as a community.
NY Classical recognizes that the historic theatrical canon from which American theatre derives its “classics” has a long history of violence, oppression, and erasure of bodies, identities, and voices that are not white, not male, not cis-gendered, not heteronormative, and/or disabled.
Through New Visions, we are developing plays that explore new ways of viewing the “classics,” expand our ideas of what “classics” can be, and challenge the power structures that undergird the notion of “classics.”
Our New Visions Finalists
Lemuria by Bonnie Antosh
Professor Anabelle Katz-Carver, the greatest primatologist since Jane Goodall, runs her elite research lab as a strict matriarchy. After grooming potential successors for decades, she's finally ready to choose an heir — but in the animal kingdom and in our own, how does a queen pass the crown on to another queen? Lemuria is an inheritance drama about dominance, queer Southern scientists, academic lineage, sex, and — yes — lemurs. Inspired by Shakespeare’s King Lear.
The Killing Fields by Anya Pearson
For Cly, the news of her husband’s early release from prison complicates her budding relationship with his cousin, Aegisthus. But that’s nothing compared to the threat he poses to her efforts to wrestle their daughter back from a life of addiction. Set in East Oakland in the midst of the 1980’s crack epidemic, The Killing Fields re-imagines the story of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon through a mother’s epic struggle to rescue her daughter.
