A Bit About This Theater

This is New City Theater’s fourth and final home theater since its founding in 1982 by artistic director  John Kazanjian and actress Mary Ewald.  The New City was founded and developed as an alternative to the corporate structured theater that fails to provide a home for  playwrights and  performers. So, from the get-go, the New City has been artist-run and ensemble centered seeking to develop long-term, on-going artistic collaborations with a select group of high quality national artists and Seattle artists.

Artistic Director  John Kazanjian  invites artists to make new theater work which will then have their first public presentations here in our intimate 30 seat theater. Founding artists Mary Ewald and Kazanjian also stage plays that are language centered, socio-political in content, and formally inventive. Some past playwrights include: Maria Irene Fornes, Samuel Beckett, Caryl Churchill, Wallace Shawn, Jean Genet, Len Jenkin, Richard Foreman, John Jesurun, Theatre X, W.David Hancock, Sam Shepard, William Shakespeare…

Prior to the late 1980’s Republican Cultural War initiated by Ronald Reagan, the New City operated with a $270,000  budget with $108,000 of cultural funding  (60% earned income / 40% unearned income). The New City now operates with a $45,000 budget and annual “Sustained Support” of $1,000 from the City and $2,000  from the County Arts Agencies. But then this broad funding collapse has had a disastrous impact upon the entire cultural field and is a consequence of the victories of right-wing ideology. The American Arts & Humanities lost the Cultural War of the late 20th Century.