NEW PLAY DEVELOPMENT
Mentor Project
“What the Cherry Lane is doing is so exciting. Most important, I think, is the mentoring program of young playwrights. It is the mentoring program which will allow us to have an important theatrical future.”
— Edward Albee, founding mentor
Cherry Lane’s marquee program is our Obie Award-winning new play series Mentor Project, dedicated to launching the next generation of American dramatists. Mentor Project engages leading playwrights in one-on-one mentoring relationships with early-career writers. Over the course of a season mentors guide their writers through the challenging process of new play development, from readings, rewrites, and casting through rehearsals and performance. The program culminates each spring in fully-staged workshop productions, following our core belief that there is no better teacher for a playwright than experiencing your play as it was intended: in living, luminous shape on stage, from your seat in the company of an audience.
Featured below: IMAGES FROM The Mentor Project 2019 & 2020 seasons
Playwrights Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson & Paul Foster in front of Cherry Lane in 1965.
History
Established in 1998 by our Founder Angelina Fiordellisi, Mentor Project was inspired by Edward Albee’s work at Cherry Lane in the 1960s creating what were then and continue to be rare production opportunities for emerging playwrights. Through this initiative early works by Sam Shepard, Amiri Baraka, A.R. Gurney, and Jean-Claude van Itallie all received their first productions on Cherry Lane’s stage.
In 2020 Mentor Project celebrated its 22nd year, having launched new works by more than 60 emerging playwrights, from Anne Washburn, Katori Hall, Rajiv Joseph, and Sheila Callaghan - all of whom have since returned to the program to serve as mentors - to our latest seasons featuring works by Shawn Randall, Kareem M. Lucas, Matthew Paul Olmos, and C.A. Johnson, mentored by Diana Oh, Craig ‘muMs’ Grant, Taylor Mac, and Martyna Majok.
The Mentor Project 2019 team of playwrights and mentors (clockwise from top left: Matthew Paul Olmos, Craig ‘muMs’ Grant, Martyna Majok, Taylor Mac, Kareem M. Lucas, C.A. Johnson). Photo by Monique Carboni.
Launching the future of american drama
Alumni of Mentor Project continue to flourish on and off Broadway, regionally, and around the world. In the 2020 season alone, you four Mentor Project plays were set to premiere off Broadway: Ren Dara Santiago’s The Siblings Play (mentored by Lucy Thurber), presented by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater; Jocelyn Bioh’s Nollywood Dreams (mentored by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins), presented by MCC Theater; Jiehae Park’s Peerless (mentored by Kwame Kwei-Armah), presented by Primary Stages, and Nathan Yungerberg’s Esai’s Table (mentored by Stephen Adly Guirgis) presented by Cherry Lane Theatre and JAG Productions on our very own mainstage.
Our Supporters
Mentor Project is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Mentor Project is also made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Mentor Project gratefully acknowledges support from Radio Drama Network, Howard Gilman Foundation, Axe-Houghton Foundation, The Curtis W. McGraw Foundation, Richenthal Foundation, Lucille Lortel Foundation, John Golden Fund, Funkadelic Studios, Next Day Flyers.
Pictured in carousel, from 2019 season: Kareem M. Lucas in The Maturation of an Inconvenient Negro; Jennifer Dorr White, Andrea Negrete, Toni Pollitt Lachelle, Carmen Zilles in Matthew Paul Olmos’ three girls never learnt the way home; Erin Anderson, Sharlene Cruz, Alex Hurt, Renika Williams in The Climb by C.A. Johnson (photos by Da Ping Luo). From 2020 season: Steven Boyer, Nia Calloway, Shawn Randall, Kiet Tai Cao, and Rocky Vega in Shawn Randall’s (The Making Of) How to Save the World in 90 Minutes. Photos by Russ Rowland.