MISSION

Cherry Lane Alternative’s mission is to support playwrights and small theater companies whose programs uplift emerging writers, enhancing our culture’s literary landscape and consequently, the future of American drama.

Artists & Projects We Support:

According to the Chorus
By Arlene Hutton

In the basement quick change room of a Broadway theater in the mid-1980s, the chorus girls are at war with their dressers. Will the new dresser, with her own sad past and uncertain future, be able to navigate this minefield?

According to the Chorus is a funny, nostalgic behind-the-scenes look at a pivotal period in the history of Broadway where women’s issues and the AIDS crisis play out through the everyday lives of Equity performers and union dressers. With a cast of twelve and a dog, this is ensemble work in the spirit of Balm in Gilead and Hot in Baltimore.

Arlene Hutton (she/her/hers) is the author of Last Train to Nibroc, which received a New York Drama League Best Play nomination and was a finalist for the Francesca Primus Prize. Regional theatre credits include B Street, Chester Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Florida Studio Theatre, Kitchen Theatre, Mad Cow, Rubicon Theatre, and Washington Stage Guild. Her plays, including I Dream Before I Take the Stand and As It Is In Heaven, have been presented at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Off- and Off-Off-Broadway, in London and throughout the world. Her works have been published by Dramatists Play Service, Samuel French, Playscripts, and Dramatic Publishing and appear in textbooks and best play anthologies.

An alumna of New Dramatists and member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, Honor Roll!, New Circle Theatre Company, and New Light Theater Project, Hutton is a three-time winner of the Samuel French Short Play Festival, nine-time finalist for the Heideman Award, and recipient of the Lippman and Calloway awards. She has received commissions and grants from the EST/Sloan Foundation, NYSCA, the Bushwick Starr pet project, the South Carolina Arts Commission, the Educational Theatre Association, the Big Bridge Theatre Consortium, the Carthage College New Play Initiative, and Cherry Lane Alternative. Hutton has taught at the College of Charleston, Fordham University and the Sewanee Writers Conference and was twice named the Tennessee Williams Fellow at the University of the South. Residencies include the Australian National Playwrights Conference, Blue Mountain Center, MacDowell Colony, SPACE at Ryder Farm, VCCA, Winterthur and Yaddo. Based in New York City, she is on the faculty of Goddard College and teaches playwriting at The Barrow Group.

Top: Joy Donze, Tabitha Gayle, Iraisa Ann Reilly, Sofia Ayral-Hutton, Judith Hiller, and Kleo Mitrokostas. Bottom: Karen Ziemba and company. Photos: Hunter Canning.

Let Me Cook For You
By Orietta Crispino

Let Me Cook For You is an epic journey through food, fashion, and fable. It is an invitation to a meal that is life itself, an offering of personal history as its main ingredient, a meditation on a life in service of others and on the kindness of strangers. It is a ritual of repetition and renewal, and a multi-sensory show that asks audiences to examine the stories and objects that make up a life. It focuses on the stories we repeat, the clothes we take from one place to another (in Orietta’s case, from Milan to New York), and the foods that remind us of our childhoods. By sharing a meal, touching fabrics rich with history, and listening closely together, audiences engage with and re-enact the moments of resiliency that define our sense of self.

Orietta Crispino is an accomplished theatre artist, born in Italy. She is a graduate of the prestigious Piccolo Teatro School in Milan, where she worked with the major Italian directors Giorgio Strehler and Massimo Castri. She later taught acting and directing there. Among her many theatre projects are: Passport No. 23.922, a piece she wrote and directed on the life of Tina Modotti; and a three-year project in Trieste directing the plays of Pirandello’s Italian contemporaries. She is a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and the League of Professional Theatre Women. In addition to her theatre work, Ms. Crispino has done art projects on the body in its performative aspect. Her body research culminated in a performance piece with the photographer Vibeke Jensen, Camera Obscura, shown at PS1 in New York, Bogota, and Trieste. Ms. Crispino is currently the Artistic Director at TheaterLab.

In addition to Let Me Cook For You, her most recent productions there are Three Sisters Come and Go and Snow in the Living Room, a retelling of the Brothers Grimm’s Snow White.

The Idea of Me
By Kristina Poe

“When Ellison returns home from a mental hospital following a recent suicide attempt, putting her life back together proves more complicated than she ever imagined… especially in regards to her relationship with her mother, who does everything she can for Ellison, except seeing her for who she truly is.

The Idea of Me is a play about love, acceptance, and the attempt of each of us to live by finding the courage to overcome the most tenacious of enemies: ourselves.”
— The New Play Exchange

Kristina Poe spent the first twenty years of her theater career stage/company/production managing regionally and in New York, including a seven-year stint as company manager for LAByrinth Theater Company. Her first play, Love Sick, was produced in both L.A. (extended twice, and named one of the Top Ten Reviewed plays in L.A.) and NYC, and is published by Dramatists Play Service. Her next play, The Restlessness of Desire, closed out LAByrinth’s Barn Series and was a Semi-Finalist for the O’Neill Conference. The Idea of Me was selected as part of the 2015 Mentor Project at Cherry Lane Theatre (mentored by Chay Yew) and most recently was part of LAByrinth’s Barn Series. Her work has also been developed at Barefoot Theater Company, The Actors Studio, The Public Theater, NY Madness, Nylon Fusion Theatre Company, and Cincinnati Playhouse, and published by Dramatists Play Service and in Smith & Kraus Best Monologues of 2014. She has received the Celebrating Women Playwrights grant, attended University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and is a member of LAByrinth Theater Company and The Actors Studio Playwright/Directors Unit.

Top: Elizabeth Ramos and Gregory Perri in the 2015 Mentorship Project production of The Idea of Me at Cherry Lane Theatre. Photo: Kristina Makowski.
Bottom: Elizabeth Ramos and Lisa Ramirez in the 2015 Mentorship Project production of The Idea of Me at Cherry Lane Theatre. Photo: Kristina Makowski.

Palm Springs Young Playwrights Festival

The Palm Springs Young Playwrights Festival promotes and encourages creative writing in the theatrical form and is open to all students in the elementary, middle, and high school level within Riverside County, CA. The Festival provides a scholarship to further education in the arts, mentorship, and a public reading to young playwrights of chosen plays. The beauty of our community is that we unite under this creative process and help youth develop their craft, explore their ideas, and enjoy the experience together. Our young playwrights are involved from the very beginning and we continue our relationship, years after the festival, with our Alumni Advisory Board.

Above: Director Chuck Yates and Cal Vaughn, PSYPF 2021 Winner

PAST IN RESIDENCE

Since 2016, Cherry Lane Alternative has supported resident theatre companies by providing space and stability for ongoing artistic development. These residencies foster long-term creative relationships and allow ensembles to build and sustain new work over time. Resident companies have included LAByrinth Theater Company, Miranda Theatre Company, and The Foundry, among others.



PROGRAMS / GRANTS

Supporting theatre makers has always been a core value at Cherry Lane Alternative — one instilled by our founder and inseparable from who we are as a producing company. Over the past several years, this commitment has been the heartbeat of our work, and it is one we look forward to carrying forward as we return to the stage.

The work we do at Cherry Lane Alternative is made possible by a community of generous supporters who believe, as we do, that new plays change culture.