Name: How Theater Serves Community, and Community Serves Theater
Start: 2023-03-10T17:00:00-05:00
End: 2023-03-10T18:45:00-05:00
Location: ZOOM Room

How Theater Serves Community, and Community Serves Theater

Friday 3/10 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: Emily Weiner, artistic director and Susan Goodwillie, managing director of Houses on the Moon Theater Company; and Gayle Waxenberg, founding executive director of NewYorkRep. Meet two New York City not-for-profits that are deeply dedicated to raising awareness, challenging social injustices and amplifying unheard voices. Learn the different ways they confront crucial issues and how audiences – and community – play a key role in their programming and identity. How has their mission evolved since their founding? How did they survive shutdown, and are audiences back yet? And what more do they hope to accomplish in the future?

Panelists

GAYLE WAXENBERG

Gayle’s career began on Wall Street where she managed the marketing and corporate communications for a premiere investment bank. During her 11 years there, she won a multitude of awards for the creative and strategic campaigns she directed. She later started her own marketing consulting firm, Waxenberg & Associates, working with advertising, public relations and direct marketing firms servicing the financial industry. A born advocate, she left the for-profit sector and committed her self to raising awareness for those less fortunate. Combining her extensive business experience and philanthropic work, she began giving “voice” to the different communities she served, and continues to serve; domestic abuse victims, hospice patients, substance abuse victims, immigrants, at-risk children and mental health patients. Gayle has been repeatedly honored for her service by the organizations she serves. Recognizing the power of the stories she captured, she launched the Telling Company in 2012 as a forum for telling real-life stories influencing social change through art. She has now brought The Telling Company to NewYorkRep becoming a founding member with Markus Potter. Her first play, A Bitter Pill, premiered in 2016 at the Hudson Guild Theater, as part of the Venus/Adonis Theater Festival. Gayle also produced the multi-award winning film Influence, and the London production of Stalking the Bogeyman, which received an Off-West End (Offie nomination) for best production and direction. Produced readings included Ben Elton’s Olivier award winning play, Popcorn, starring Sharon Stone and Stacey Keach. She is proud to have launched and produced a community based program of readings, Thought Bubbles, to bring new theatrical work free to people who may not otherwise have access. Gayle is also a Founder/Past President and currently a Board Member of The Graham School Education Foundation, a Board Member of Danza Espanza, The American Spanish Dance Theater, and was an elected official. She is also a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, the Off Broadway Alliance, Theater Resources Unlimited and a member of the League of Professional Theater Women.
EMILY JOY WEINER

is the Co-Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Houses on the Moon Theater Company. New York theater includes Othello at the West End Theater, Coming Through at the American Place Theatre, Tara’s Crossing at the Lower East Side Tenement Theater, Finding The Words at the Lucille Lortel, Henry V at the Bank Street Theater, An Epidog with Mabou Mines, and De Novo at 59E59th St. Theaters. Selected regional theater includes The Crucible at Madison Repertory Theatre and Fefu And Her Friends and The Threepenny Opera at Williamstown Theater Festival. She was awarded the Craig Hardesty Best Female Actress award for her performance in Houses on the Moon’s pilot play, Building Houses on the Moon. She recently developed and toured a one-woman adaptation of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. She is currently directing Houses on the Moon’s new play in development, The Assignment, which will be premiering Off-Broadway next spring. Emily studied in NYC with Wynn Handman. She has also been working for the last many years with NYC public school students, teachers and parents designing and facilitating creative workshops using drama and drama therapy techniques to teach social/emotional skills.

GAYLE WAXENBERG

EMILY JOY WEINER