New Play Workshops
Over the last twenty-one years, CTC has dedicated our resources to launching new work onto the stage and into the industry. New Play Workshops (NPWs) have been at the center of this endeavor. Previously, NPWs were staged and produced with design and technical support. Moving forward, we will be using a more fluid, less produced model for our New Play Workshops: shifting our focus toward the text and the individual needs of each project and playwright. Depending upon what will best serve the play in its current stage of development, these plays are likely presented by a cast of professional and Conservatory actors at music stands.
Ahoy-Hoy: A Play About That Relatable Feeling When Someone Invents the Telephone Three Hours Before You Do
By Jenny Stafford
Directed by Jade King Carroll
A (Mostly) True Tale of the Telephone
Performance Dates: July 2-4
History has never been this ridiculous nor this fun! It’s 1876, and Alexander Graham Bell and his archrival, Elisha Gray, compete to save the world from the tyranny of telegraphs. Toiling in their laboratories, skullduggery ensues as the inventors go to extraordinary lengths in their absurd quest for legacy. Who will claim the title? Stranger-than-fiction, Ahoy-Hoy is a deliriously unhinged gallop through the (mostly) true tale of the invention of the telephone.
Ticket price: $20
Creatives
Jenny Stafford
Playwright
Jade King Carroll
Director
Jade King Carroll is a freelance director based in NYC and the Producing Artistic Director of Chautauqua Theater Company (CTC) in Chautauqua, NY. A distinguished director specializing in new play development, she has collaborated extensively with acclaimed playwrights including Dael Orlandersmith, Chisa Hutchinson, Inda Craig-Galván, Kate Hamill, Dominique Morisseau, and C.A. Johnson. Carroll has supported emerging writers at leading institutions such as the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Roundabout Theatre Company, and Lincoln Center Education.
She has directed over 60 classical and contemporary productions at theaters nationwide, including: Amerikin (Primary Stages); The Light and The Dark (Primary Stages/CTC); A Jumping Off Point (Round House); Proof of Love (NYTW/Audible at Minetta Lane); New Age (Milwaukee Rep); Red Velvet (Shakespeare Theatre Company); Detroit ’67 (McCarter/Hartford Stage); Intimate Apparel, The Piano Lesson (McCarter, Hartford); Having Our Say (Hartford/Long Wharf); Autumn’s Harvest (Lincoln Center Institute); Stew (Ebony Rep); Seven Deadly Sins – Wrath (Miami New Drama – Drama League Award); Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill (Syracuse Stage); Trouble in Mind (Two River & PlayMakers Rep); Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Whipping Man, Skeleton Crew, Native Gardens, How I Learned What I Learned, Bad Dates, Perseverance (Portland Stage); The Revolutionists, Sunset Baby (City Theatre); A Raisin in the Sun (Perseverance); Pride and Prejudice, The Tempest (CTC); Seven Guitars, The Persians (People’s Light); Still Life (Ancram Opera House); King Hedley II (Portland Playhouse); Fat Ham (PlayMakers Rep); A Raisin in the Sun, Cardboard Piano (Juilliard); Laughing Wild, Redeemed, Skeleton Crew (Dorset Theatre Festival); Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money (Atlantic – NYT Family Pick); New Golden Age (Primary Stages – Susan Smith Blackburn nominee).
Her audio work includes new dramas for Audible, Marvel, Broadway Podcast Network, and Geva Theatre Center, including: Marvel’s Wastelanders: Doom (Ambies Nomination); Proof of Love (Audible); Redeemed (Broadway Podcast Network/Dorset); The Bleeding Class (Geva); Isolated Incidents (BPN). She was Associate Director for Broadway’s A Streetcar Named Desire (with Blair Underwood) and The Gin Game (with Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones).
At CTC, Carroll has led two seasons of innovative new work, including the world premieres of tiny father by Mike Lew (dir. Moritz Von Stuelpnagel, co-produced with Barrington Stage) and The Light and The Dark by Kate Hamill (commissioned by Carroll, co-produced with Primary Stages). She has developed works by Sofya Levitsky-Weitz, Chisa Hutchinson, Harrison David Rivers, Anna Ziegler, C.A. Johnson (commission), Sharyn Rothstein (commission), Hilary Bettis, and Kate Hamill; most recently she has commissioned a new work by Zora Howard and a musical adaptation of Kwame Alexander’s book The Crossover.
CTC has also produced work by Lynn Nottage and Noah Haidle under her leadership. This summer, Carroll welcomes her mentor Emily Mann to direct Execution of Justice; Oliver Butler will workshop Rothstein’s Best for Baby; Mei Ann Teo will collaborate with Vichet Chum; Carroll will direct the world premiere of C.A. Johnson’s Tell Me You’re Dying and develop a new piece with James Anthony Tyler.
Under her leadership, CTC has secured two NYSCA grants and formed partnerships with the Telsey Office, City Theatre (PGH), and the Drama League, expanding its directing fellows’ program. Carroll oversees the educational arm of CTC, selecting and programming a yearly cohort of 8–12 MFA conservatory actors, 4–5 design fellows, and 3 Drama League FutureNow directing fellows.
In her first two years at CTC, Carroll helped raise $11.5 million and led the design and groundbreaking of the new Roe Green Theater Center, a completely accessible space which will include offices, rehearsal spaces, a prop shop, two green rooms, dressing rooms, a coaching room, and a flexible black box theater with lobby and a bar.
Previously, Carroll was a Van Lier and NYC Council of the Arts directing fellow at Second Stage, later receiving a TCG New Generation Future Leaders grant under the mentorship of Carole Rothman. At Dorset Theatre Festival, she ran a commissioning and fellowship program, commissioning Sarah Gancher’s bluegrass Onegin and audio plays by Theresa Rebeck and Chisa Hutchinson. She is also a former NYTW emerging artist fellow, Women’s Project Theater artistic apprentice, and McCarter Theatre Center apprentice. A Gates Millennium Scholar, she has also received SUNY New Paltz’s 40 Under 40 award, the Paul Green Award (National Theatre Conference/August Wilson estate), and the 2020 Drama League Award.
As an educator, Carroll has taught or guest-directed at Juilliard, Princeton, NYU, University of Iowa, Penn State, Adelphi, New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, Point Park, UNC Chapel Hill, West Virginia University, Bard, University of Maryland, Columbia University, and Chautauqua Theater Company.
The Motions (a CTC commission)
By Zora Howard
Directed by Keenan Tyler Oliphant
Navigating Time Through Small Rituals
Performance Dates: July 30-August 1
In the wake of an untimely prognosis, a father and son must relearn how to share space after years of estrangement. They pass the time with quiet rituals – making coffee, playing chess – navigating what is left to say and what is better left unsaid. Funny, tender, and deeply human, The Motions is an ode to the small movements that make a life, and the possibility of beginning again even at our very ends.
Ticket price: $20
Creatives
Zora Howard
Playwright
Zora Howard is a Harlem-bred writer and director. Plays include STEW (P73 Productions; 2021 Pulitzer Prize Finalist), HANG TIME (The Flea/National Tour), BUST (The Alliance/Goodman; 2022 Susan Smith Blackburn/L. Arnold Weissberger New Play Award Finalist), THE MASTER’S TOOLS (Wiener Festwochen; Williamstown Theatre Festival), AtGN (Oberlin College), GOOD FAITH and THE MOTIONS. In 2020, her feature film Premature (2020 Film Independent John Cassavetes Award nominee), which she co-wrote with director Rashaad Ernesto Green, opened in theaters following its world premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Her work has been developed at New York Theatre Workshop, Second Stage, Manhattan Theatre Club, Cinereach, Ojai Playwrights Conference, La Napoule Art Foundation, Stillwright, and Cape Cod Theatre Project, among others. Zora is a 2025 Steinberg Playwright Awardee, a 2025 Peacedale Kopit Fellow, a former MTC Judith Champion and Lark Van Lier New Voices Fellow, a Lilly Award and Helen Merrill Award recipient, and alumna of the P73 I-73 Writers Group. She is currently under commission from Seattle Rep and Chautauqua Theater Company and developing film projects with Shot of Tea and River Road Entertainment.
Keenan Tyler Oliphant
Director
Keenan Tyler Oliphant is a Theatre-maker and Director from South Africa. Keenan’s work is in the lineage of the communal theatre-making and storytelling traditions of South Africa. As a Theatre-maker Keenan recalls his traditional Southern African storytelling lineage by simultaneously exchanging with histories and futures to create spaces of healing, investigation, mourning and celebration through performance. Selected directing credits include Nazareth Hassan’s Practice (Playwrights Horizons) Heather Christian’s Animal Wisdom (Signature Theatre) and TERCE: A Practical Breviary (HERE Arts), Will You Come With Me? (PlayCo May 2022), Jeesun Choi’s To the Ends of the Earth (JACK), Jay Stull’s The Singularity Play (Havard TDM; Alliance Theatre Reading) Sam Grabiner’s People on Earth (Columbia University), Vivian Barnes’ Intro To (Ensemble Stage Theatre), Live from Mount Olympus Podcast (The Team), Kyk Hoe Skyn Die Son [Look at How the Sun Shines] (Clubbed Thumb Winterworks) and Self-Combustion of a 30 Something Year Old... (New Ohio Producers Club). Keenan is Associate Director for Hadestown (Broadway). Keenan has developed work with Ars Nova, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizon, The Vineyard Theatre and more. Keenan is an alumnus of the Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow (2020-2021), the Drama League Directing Fellowship (2021-2022) and Columbia University MFA in Directing for Theatre program.
As You Like It
By William Shakespeare
Adapted by Peter Andersen
Original score by Bandits on the Run
A Sweet and Subversive New Musical Adaptation
Performance Dates: August 13-15
Shakespeare’s most musical comedy springs to life in a playful and vibrant new adaptation by Peter Andersen, featuring original music by indie-pop-folk trio and Chautauqua favorites Bandits on the Run. Two lovers meet in the Forest of Arden, but all is not as it seems in this sweet and subversive classic brought to life by the full 2026 CTC Acting Conservatory and professional guest artists. This exciting workshop explores Shakespeare’s text alongside those of his queer contemporaries, riffing on the play’s original lyrics with newly composed music by Bandits. All the world’s a stage!
Ticket price: $20
Creatives
Peter Andersen
Adaptor and Director
Peter Andersen is the producing artistic director of Oak Park Festival Theatre.
He is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University’s MFA directing program; he is also a graduate of Emerson College where he obtained his BFA in Acting. Formerly, he was the education manager at Writers Theatre in Glencoe. He has also worked at Steppenwolf Theatre Company as an Education Apprentice and Multicultural Fellow.
Directing projects include: Hamlet (Oak Park Festival Theatre); Twelfth Night (Oak Park Festival Theatre); Pericles (Catskill Mountain Shakespeare) Romeo & Juliet (Oak Park Festival Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Oak Park Festival Theatre); Macbeth (NIU); Gross Indecency (NIU/Upcoming); Measure for Measure (Montana Shakespeare in the Parks); The Rise and Fall of Little Voice (The Gift Theatre); 10 outta 10 (The Gift Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Catskill Mountain Shakespeare); Our Town (Roosevelt University); At Your Own Risk (University of Chicago); The Kennedy Plays (CMU); 21 (CMU); As You Like It (CMU); The American Myth (Shakespeare and Company); The Cafe Collections; O/A: The Sophocles Project.
He has also worked for The Royal Shakespeare Company, Chicago Shakespeare, TimeLine Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, Writers Theatre, and American Players Theatre as an assistant and associate director.
As an actor he has performed in several seasons at Shakespeare & Company (Lenox, MA); Actor’s Shakespeare Project (Boston, MA); and Company One (Boston, MA); he has also performed in New York City and Chicago.
Bandits on the Run
Original Music
Bandits on the Run got a little taste of the Chautauqua magic when they played the Amphitheater last summer, and they are thrilled to join the Chautauqua Theater Company Season! A band formed from a chance encounter on a subway platform, they began their career busking and since then they’ve toured internationally, been featured on NPR, played festivals such as Americanafest, Rocky Mountain Folks Fest, and the Singapore Formula 1 Grand Prix, composed for film and television, and opened for acts such as The Wood Brothers and Paris Paloma. Their new album Rough Magic is set for release June 12.
In the theatre space, they’re developing the musical adaptation of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape at MCC Theater with fellow actor-musician Christopher Sears and Academy Award nominee Peter Hedges, and Yukon Ho in association with Prospect Musicals.
They’ve received residencies at the Berkeley Rep Ground Floor, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, and the Johnny Mercer Songwriters Grove at Goodspeed Musicals, as well as an NEA Grant.
The bandits also individually work as actors and behind-the-camera folks. Regina is a freelance photographer and worked on the casting team for HBO’s And Just Like That, Sydney was recently seen in The Ruins at the Guthrie Theater and Law & Order, and Adrian was recently seen in Swept Away on Broadway and Best Medicine on FOX and Hulu. @banditsontherun