Name: Growing and Running a Not-for-Profit Theater Company (part 2)
Start: 2022-09-16T17:00:00-04:00
End: 2022-09-16T18:30:00-04:00
Location: ZOOM Room

Growing and Running a Not-for-Profit Theater Company (part 2)

Friday 9/16, 2022 at 5:00 eastern time

Community Gathering on Zoom - register with the bright red reservation box to receive the Zoom link. These gatherings are a service for the theater community and are offered free for TRU members; we ask that non-members help keep us running by making a donation or joining as a member.

In the room: Meredith Lucio, producing director of The Assembly Theater; Rob Neill, co-artistic & founding ensemble member of New York Neo-Futurists; Stephen Sunderlin, producing artistic director of the Vital Theater Company. The Assembly is a collective of multi-disciplinary performance artists who create "devised theater"; NY Neo-Futurists is a community of artists that fuses elements of poetry, game and performance art to create ever-changing theater and other artistic experiments; Vital Theatre is a community of artists dedicated to inspiring young audiences. Community and collaboration are key to all three companies. Our guests will share stories about their company's founding: Has their mission, their infrastructure and their audience evolved over the years? How did they grow and maintain their companies? To what do they attribute their longevity? How did they adapt to the restraints of shutdown, what lessons were learned and what are their plans going forward?

Panelists

ROB NEILL

(NY Neo-Futurists) is a New York-based writer, performer, educator, and film and theater maker whose body of work includes avant-garde theater, podcasts, storytelling, Broadway, short film, and masterclasses in devised theater and creativity. He is a founding member and current co-Artistic Director of the internationally-renowned performance collective, the New York Neo-Futurists. His original plays have been performed at The Public Theater, The Ontological, P.S.122, The Whitney, and HERE Arts Center. As an actor, he has performed in numerous Neo-Futurists shows in NYC and beyond over the last 25 years, in addition to Tony-nominated Broadway shows (“London Assurance” and “Peter and the Starcatcher” on tour), regionally (“You Never Can Tell,” “Tartuffe”) and at the Edinburgh Festival (“Too Much Light...” & “The Dirty Thirty Plus”). Neill has taught a variety of masterclasses around the country at Brooklyn College, Fordham, NYU, Wellesley, Hofstra, Texas State, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Grinnell College, and the University of Rhode Island where he was an artist in residence in 2017. He has a BA in Philosophy and Russian Studies from Grinnell College and a Masters degree in Classical Acting from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He also studied performance at the National Theater Institute and sketch at the Peoples Improv Theater, and he has worked on a variety of independent films. The New York Neo-Futurists are a dynamic ensemble of multidisciplinary artists who write and perform original work rooted in the truth of their own lived experiences.
STEPHEN SUNDERLIN

(Vital Theatre Company) has a wealth of experience running theaters within budget, supporting playwrights and bringing together gifted, like-minded artists. He has planned Vital’s seasons for the past twenty-two years and helmed the theatre to its current level of excellence. He has served as Artistic Director at the venerable summer-stock theatre, Millbrook Playhouse, and formed a theatrical production company to produce and direct evenings of one acts and other plays. He was previously a resident director with The Pioneer Playhouse. He holds a BA in Theatre from the Bloomberg University of Pennsylvania, trained in the Stanislavski technique with Sonia Moore, studied with Herbert Bergof and completed the two-year Meisner program with William Esper. Stephen has served as Press Associate with Jeffrey Richards Associates on numerous Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. He also branched out into publicity, marketing and advertising representing many Off and Off Off-Broadway productions. VITAL THEATRE COMPANY is dedicated to producing entertaining and educational theatre for young audiences.

ROB NEILL

STEPHEN SUNDERLIN