TheatreworksUSA
administrative history
TheatreworksUSA is America's largest and most prolific professional not-for-profit theatre for young and family audiences.
Since 1961, we have enlightened, entertained, and instructed over 78 million people in 49 states and Canada.
Every year, over four million people, many of whom have no other access to the performing arts, see our shows in venues as varied as local elementary school gymnasiums, regional fine arts centers, and major Broadway-sized theaters. Every year, TheatreworksUSA tours approximately 16 shows from our ever-growing repertoire of 117 plays and musicals. In addition, we also have an extensive multi-cultural guest artist roster, including storytellers, puppeteers, poets, and magicians.
We have three main programs:
CLASS TRIPS
Theatreworks manages school-time field trip programs in 139 theaters in 127 cities across the country. Teachers call our New York box office to purchase tickets for their class.
TOURING
Regional fine arts presenters book our shows, and sell tickets to schools and to the public. Also, local schools may bring our shows to their venue for a private performance.
FREE SUMMER THEATRE
Since 1989, we have provided free tickets to the very best in family entertainment for thousands of disadvantaged New York-area young people, as well as the general public. This program is entirely underwritten by charitable donations and grants.
TheatreworksUSA has a distinguished history of not only providing young audiences with their first taste of the performing arts, but also giving young actors, writers, directors, and designers an early opportunity to work in this field. A list of our alumni reads like a veritable "who's who" of theatre: four-time Tony-winning director Jerry Zaks, Robert Jess Roth (Beauty and the Beast), Michael Mayer (Thoroughly Modern Millie), Gabriel Barre; writers Marta Kauffman and David Crane (TV's "Friends"), Lynn Ahrens and Steven Flaherty (Ragtime, Once on This Island), Jason Robert Brown (Parade), Larry O'Keefe (Bat Boy), Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx (Avenue Q); and Tony-winning actors Roger Bart, Chuck Cooper, and John Glover. Esteemed performers F. Murray Abraham, Henry Winkler, and Judy Kuhn also got their start with Theatreworks, and other actors have gone on to originate lead roles in such Broadway shows as Hairspray, The Producers, Les Mis?rables, Rent, Urinetown, and many others.
Under the direction of Barbara Pasternack (Artistic Director) and Ken Arthur (Managing Director), TheatreworksUSA is also one of the most honored theatres of our kind. We are the only children's theatre to receive both a Drama Desk and a Lucille Lortel Award. In addition, TheatreworksUSA was the recipient of a 2001 Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award, and in May 2000, The Actors Fund of American bestowed its Medal of Honor upon our founders, Jay Harnick and Charles Hull.
TheatreworksUSA's goal is to continue doing what we have successfully accomplished for more than forty years: giving America's children their first thrilling day at the theatre!