As we draw close to the end of this inaugural cycle of Brave New Work, we wanted to cast our final spotlight on our partners in bringing this exciting new initiative to life!
Meet our Collaborators
The CRY HAVOC Company
The CRY HAVOC Company believes that writing a script doesn’t have to be a solitary experience, and that feedback at key points in the writing process can bring you closer to your goals. Their approach to script development places the writer’s goals at the center of the workshop discussion, ensuring that collaborators are offering feedback in service of the writer’s vision – the play they are trying to write.
Read on to learn more about the company’s approach to developing new work, what excites them about this collaboration with NYSX, and more – featured company members are Jen Curfman (Co-Artistic Director), Jerzy Gwiazdowski (Managing Director), and Katelin Wilcox (Associate Artistic Director).
===
What are your favorite elements of CRY HAVOC's approach to new play development? What elements do playwrights seem to find most effective or enriching?
Jen: In the CRY HAVOC approach, playwrights are empowered to articulate their goals for their script during the moderated discussion, which allows focused, specific feedback from the artists at the table. It’s thrilling to be in the room with a community of artists who are there in service of each other’s work. Playwrights often tell us that the collaborative space helps them challenge their own writing process and deepen their work.
Jerzy: I love meeting and working with writers. Selfishly, that's my favorite part. Writing can be so lonely; our development process meets a writer where they are and brings their work into a room full of artists ready to support their goals.
Katelin: I think our guiding principle of "helping the playwright write the play they are trying to write" and the facilitator component are things that I, and our playwrights, really respond to. Sometimes feedback processes can be muddied by personal taste and opinions. We've worked really hard to create a structured approach that keeps feedback focused and, with the role of the facilitator, helps the playwright be prepared to receive and synthesize that feedback.
What excites you most about the Brave New Work collaboration with NYSX?
Katelin: I love Shakespeare and I have been absolutely blown away by the way our playwrights have taken his work as a jumping-off point and come up with such varied, creative, thought-provoking work. There are lots of little reference points that will delight Shakespeare nerds like me, but the plays also stand completely on their own. I also feel that as artists we are in desperate need of artistic community right now, and this collaboration has allowed both companies to expand our respective communities of artists in a beautiful, exciting way.
Jen: As artists, we have the opportunity to interrogate the works of Shakespeare just as much as we celebrate these plays. What could be more exciting than bringing today’s writers together to challenge and dance with Shakespeare in their own voices? Brave New Work indeed!
Jerzy: The project doesn't take Shakespeare for granted. Each writer in the cohort (and everyone that applied to the program) brought their unique experience of Shakespeare's work to the table. These plays mean so much to so many and Brave New Work demonstrates that meaning through the perspectives of these four brilliant contemporary artists.
If you could set a new adaptation of any Shakespeare play within a particular neighborhood, area, or demographic/cultural group in 2026 NYC, what would your pitch be?
Jerzy: Let's put Timon of Athens in modern Manhattan. New York has the highest concentration of extreme wealth in the United States - the country with the highest income inequality among the world's so-called "developed" nations. In New York City, the racial wealth gap is even more grotesque. The city's density forces us to confront, or at least witness, these contradictions daily. Seems like an apt setting for a play about wealth, poverty, false generosity, loyalty and the structures that sustain inequality.
Katelin: I've lived in Sunset Park, Brooklyn for over a decade, and our namesake park is such an oasis of calm and fun within the hustle and bustle of our busy neighborhood. I'm a sucker for site-specific theater, so I think it would be fun to set one of the plays that contrast "court and country life" (As You Like It, Midsummer, Winter's Tale, Cymbeline) partly in our busy commercial district and partly in Sunset Park itself, taking the audience along for the ride!
Jen: Whether it’s examining modern politics through Mark Antony, exploring the fluidity of gender with Viola, or grieving a lost homeland with Thomas Mowbray, there’s something in Shakespeare that speaks to our joys, our rage, our city, our moment. The possibilities are endless!